Help! Heston Blumenthal is in my kitchen "There really is nothing to worry about," he consolingly adds, as I gingerly season six chicken thighs with salt and pepper, and dust them with plain flour. Trust me on this. I wish I could, but I know from experience that Blumenthal is a pathological liar. In an ancient review of his Fat Duck in Bray, his globally celebrated temple to the culinarily surreal, outlandish and barely imaginable, my sole moan in an otherwise foaming torrent of awed adulation concerned the bacon and egg ice cream. He wrote a very sweet letter, promising that it would never appear on the menu again. With the snail porridge and the "meat fruit" at his London restaurant Dinner, as I needlessly remind him, it remains a signature dish. "Yes, but I did completely change the recipe," he says. Now come on, this is isn't difficult. Strangely enough, it isn't. While it would be false to report that there are no pyrotechnics, as we shall see, the dish proves far less troublesome than feared. Then again, not every one of you can rely on having its inventor to hand, keeping an eye on the thigh skins as they crisp in unsalted butter, and teaching how to chop an onion finely and at ridiculous speed without sacrificing a single fingertip. The pyrotechnics come when, with the chicken simmering in the casserole dish, and after adding the onion and a chopped leek (only the white bit), I pour half a bottle of Amontillado into a heated copper saucepan. The flames soar towards the ceiling. Is it absolutely necessary to napalm our kitchen, I wonder? "It's fine," he says, "so long as you don't turn the extractor fan on. That sucks up the flames, and could cause a proper fire. The flames die down, and as I add double cream and chicken stock (his own brand, bought like all the ingredients from his friends at Waitrose), he sets about peeling some baby onions for later use. I must say that having Heston Blumenthal doing the tedious chores for you isn't so bad. Although seldom demoted to the role of commis chef these days, he does his work ungrudgingly and without fuss. If I have a complaint, it concerns a tendency to offer his opinions too freely. Ordinarily a foul-tempered cook who comes over what my wife calls "Hitlerian" at the faintest interference, I restrict myself to a mild rebuke when, unbidden, he adds extra sprigs of thyme to the onions as they simmer. With a tasting session awaiting him, the time pressure is on. But then life for Blumenthal is relentlessly frantic. He is off to New York soon to discuss a new joint at a Mandarin hotel, the chain for which he opened Dinner in Knightsbridge a year ago. But he seems thankfully unaffected by his fame, posing happily for snaps with our cleaning lady and an adolescent member of the household detained from school by a tummy bug. "It's easy being friendly because people are always so nice to me," he says as I transfer the thighs into a smaller casserole dish, and place it in the oven. The only time anyone's been rude to me, until today, was on a Cape Town beach. This woman came over and said: '"Why don't you stop it with all that nonsense? Your food is just disgusting. I asked her if she'd ever eaten it. She hadn't. I remind him of the Spitting Image song, "I've Never Met A Nice South African," and he gently points out, that along with Latvian Jewish and Belgian Congolese blood, he is half South African. It sounds a fittingly elaborate recipe for a gene pool. The onions, now semi-caramelised, are removed from the pan, and replaced with button mushrooms. I remove the chicken from the oven, and add the onion, leeks and mushrooms. After lobbing in grated Parmesan and Gruyere, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and a splash of white truffle oil, I garnish with fried lardons and a handful of chopped chives, tarragon and parsley. It looks gorgeously inviting. "Not bad, not bad," says my commis chef as he tastes, "but it could use ..." "More salt and pepper and another dollop of Dijon," I interrupt. "Exactly what I was going to say," he says, perhaps truthfully. But I'm a great one for the importance of acidity in a dish, so perhaps some sherry vinegar? Bizarrely, there is none of that hiding behind the crusty Heinz ketchup bottle in the cupboard. (Isn't that always the way with sherry vinegar, though? Never there when you need it). I suggest in its place a dash of sake, and he affects not to be horrified when I splash in some rice wine. The final result, though I say so myself, is sensational... rich, intense, fragrant and silky, without having had all the rustic charm poncified away, and in absolutely perfect balance. He must dash off now to taste some slightly more technically challenging dishes than the one I have, with a little assistance, just created (from page 15 of the booklet, available free with next Saturday's newspaper, by the way). And what, I ask, has Heston Blumenthal learnt today about the art of cooking? "What I've learnt," replies a man with what may well be a bright future in the business, "is that, with a bit of guidance, anyone can cook. Absolutely anyone ...