A bit of work stuff, experiments and fun

HERE`S A BIT OFF NEW DISHES AND A BIT OF HOME EXPERIMENTS.

POACHED COD, KALEPURE AND ROASTED, SMOKED DANISH CHEESE AND VINAGRETTE MADE FROM SAUSAGE FROM SOUTHERN JUTLAND. 

WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM AND CRUMBLE, LICORICE GEL, CHERRY SORBET AND RICECRACKERS WITH ANIS.

POACHED EGG 63,5, AIRY POTATOPURÈ, CRISPY POTATO,  SOUR SAGO, RAW MUSHROOMS AND HERP OIL

A little project:
Fermentet, blitzed leek top`s.
It`s saltet with 2%, and is developing nice (though very fermented smelling) liquid.
The idea came from a youtube clip from "in the wulf" restaurant, where it is used in a vinagrette for a leek dish.
It still needs about 3 weeks before its there.

Fun evening with friends, Octopus, cod roe, squid and "smelt"( little whole fish)
We confit the squid asian style, and poached the octopus in its own juices till tender.

End result the easy way:
We just mixed 50/50 self raising flour and cornstarch and tossed the poached roe and smelt in it and deep fried it.

Another experiment in fermented stuff.
I learned that miso, and søl (icelandic seaweed) are filled with umami.
So why not marinated a nice piece of beef in in.
I left it overnight in miso, søl, garlic and oil, and i must say the result where ,almost to umami packed.
Packed with flavor, you did not nee to much of it, but if you like extremely rich meaty umami flavors, this will work.

Review NAM NAM..

On a random thursday night a Thora (an old friend of me) and I where in the mood for some Asian food.

Walking around Vesterbro looking for the right place, we ended up in "NAM NAM", a farely newly opened place that has busyness mann Claus Mayer in the background,

Being a huge fan of Singapore food (and missing it allot), I had been wanting to go here since I heard about it.

There`s a variation of snacks, roti`s, salads, smaller and larger dishes.
All with a "chili system" picturing 1-3 chili`s depending on the fire it`l make in your mouth.

Here is what we ate..

Snack selection:
Prawn crackers that was all right.
 Spiced cashews that where a bit bland but had a nice citrusy taste
 Chickpea fritters with with a lovely herby yoghurt
Chips made from a special leaf/seed from indonesia, wich we weren't to thrilled about, they had a kinda bitter aftertaste.

The waiter forgot our chili crabs, so in comes our hangroast neck of pork, with 5 spice marinade.
To nice chunks of meat, tender and greasy, served with "snot fingers"  aka okra and rice on the side.
Only thing here is were the lack of heat in the marinade.

Finally the Singapore chili craps, in a (from what the menu said) spicy tomato sauce, but it was allot more sweet the spicy.
But other then that a lovely dish, and the extra free bee roti because of the waiters screw up, was lovely to get all that good, crab meaty gravy up.

NAM NAM is different then other places here.

With a real tandori oven, and hanging meat, they try to make it authentic.

Basicly everything was good, the only thing was the lack of spiciness in the dishes,  and because they are pretty rich, it would defiantly do the dishes justice.

To be honest, it`s not like the Singapore taste i remember, and it probably never will be other than the place itself, but its the closest you get here in the North.

Other then the Chili crab mistake, the service a nice and friendly, and with a bill of only 460 with the dishes and an bottle of water, we left full and pretty happy.

Restaurant cofoco/nose to tail

Having heard allot of good stuff about this restaurant, from former colleagues a friend of mine and me went for dinner at Cofoco.

From what i know, this is the first restaurant this company did, and now they have around 10 restaurants, serving up payable "gourmet light" i think you could call it.

You can go A la carte, ore go on menu`s 4 ore 6 courses.

We went for 4 courses, but instead of taking the "chef`s recommend" we went a la carte on 4 courses.

The price difference is only like 35 kr, and then you get to pick the dishes you like.

We basicly went for the heart attack sounding kinda stuff, nuggets, mushroom toast with bearnaise, sweet breads and brown butter icecream...... so yes this was a heavy night.

Oh yeah and starting out with snacks (mostly deep fried didn`t make it lighter:)

anyway here´s what we went fore.

Snack:
Potato, pork cracklings, and deepfried beef jerkie, almonds, and unripe peach with mayonnaise.
For 45 kr. pr person this was an okay little serving, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Nice bread, with smoked cheese/dill dipping.
The bread was pretty good, nice and tuff wich i like, but both of us really missed some proper butter instead of the cheese dip.
After asking the waiter, we never got an answer back if we could just have some butter.
(maby its a chef`s thing)

Chicken nuggets, and cafè de paris dip, and grilled corn.
Big ass starter, and very hearty. but nice taste, the dipping had to much curry taste, but the nuggets was really good.

Mushroom toast.
Mix of mushrooms, we where told there where chantarelles, but we couldnt find them.
Cep bearnaise hearbs, and croutons.
a nice dish, but as with all dishes this night, lacking just the last element to go from good, to awesome.

Sweetbreads, carrots, pickled beats, cress and egg based sauce.
Good dish, though it would have been really nice if the sweetbreads had maby been salted over night, to get the taste more intense.

Browned butter icecream, crumble and buttermilk sauce.
Unfortunally a pretty boring dessert.
Both taste of buttermilk and browned butter in the ice-cream where none existent.

Well we where pretty full we agreed, and having a couple of beers before this visit, and a bit of bobbles and red wine we didnt need anymore......
Buuuuuuuut being chef`s and not really having that natural stop button you should own in your head and body, we went for a after dinner snack at Nose To Tail.
A chacuteri board of patès of horse, pork aaaaand so on, chicken liver mousse and home made mustard.
Did we need it....no......did our body`s disagree the next day....well yeah.....but was it good......YES indeed!!!!!

The board at nose to tail


So all in all, Cofoco`s a nice place  its pretty cheap and the food is what to expect at the price.
The service friendly (exept for the butter situation).
We ended with a bill round 1200 kr. doing 4 courses, snacks, a glass of bobbles and an okay bottle of red vine.
You cant do that much cheaper in Copenhagen theese days...
 

Dinner at the World`st best restaurant!!!

Last week, as A "christmass came early kinda thing" we had dinner at restaurant NOMA with my job!

The pictures are not the best, the dining room is very dark, so my normal camera had even worse effect then my iPhone.

Let`s start with what we where served, this rainy evening in Copenhagen!

First we had to eat a decoration, that where in the pot of plants on the table, already there when we arrived.

Made of malt and juniper sticks, with creme fraice, thats the only one I didn`t get a photo of! 

Fried moss, and creme fraice.
Intereesting, nice crunch.

Pork crackling, and black currant leather.
Very good combo, could have used a bit of dipping maby though.

One of these mussels where a eddible shell of celeriac and fried mussel.
Nice mussel taste. 

Cheese cookies with coriander and chives.
Not the favorite one, but im not a big coriander fan.

Fried potato strings, duckliver mousse and black trompet dust.
This one actually disappointed us, the combo sounded like a winner, but tasted just like fried potato strings, nothing else.

Carrots grilled over night, charcoal.
The texture and taste of this very very surprising (candy like) could have done without the charred leeks though.

Sorrel creme to dip.

Raw cod liver, and caramelised milk.
This one really were a hit ore miss for us all.
I liked the taste, kinda oyster like, but fridge like cold, but I think that`s to keep the taste a bit down.

Pickled/smoked quails eggs.
Really lovely eggs, could have done with a bit of salt though.

Radish and carrots in malt soil and herb emulsion.
Kids party made by and fore grown ups:)

Traditional danish pastry, pickled cucumber inside and muikko.
One of the best snacks, wacky but worked.
Could have done with an actual apple slice in the middle instead of the cucumber.

Toast. herbs, vinigar powder, duck skin, cod roe emulsion.
Really fucking good snack, surf and turf in a completely new way!

Baby corn from Søren, grilled.
This dude makes good corn, taste`s allot like anise.

Sorrel, cricket pure (yes you heard it!!!), and nasturtium snow.
Interresting, but the nasturtium didn't work.

All Snack`s where served in a crazy fast pace, to keep you in the game.

First dish:
Potato`s with "peaso", NOMA`s miso, and butter emulsion.

Herb spear of juniper branch to eat it with.

rose salt for the potato`s.
This dish whas actually pretty good, the "miso butter whas lovely, and fresh with the herbs.

Pressure cooked snails, glaced in own juice, watercress emulsion.
Never had snails like this, lovely deep taste, kinda mushroom/mussely.
Eating more then 2 where too much though.

The lovely bread, with butter and fat with potato chips.

Fava beans, herbs, and buttermilk sauce.
This dish whas one of the least tasting dishes I have ever been served.
the beans where of high quality yes, but everything was under seasoned and lacked taste.

Lacto fermented plums, grilled beets, fenneljuice and again "coriander"
I couldn't really agree on this dish, my fellow dinners enjoyed it though.

Danish crab, parsley, pure, pickled egg youlk, coral and "søl" boullion.
Again lack of seasoning, and with the stock, this dish tasted just like slightly thickened water.

Caramelised cauliflower with spruce and horseradish creme. spruce oil and AGAIN buttermilk sauce.
Actually this was one of the best dishes, didnt understand buttermilk again though.

Pike "grilled" pearch, verbena sauce, and white wine foam, and baby cabbage`s.
This dish was nice, but average. 

Famous egg dish, the timing of it is cool, and it is the perfect egg fried egg.

Hay oil, herbs, and herb sauce, and a bit of crips potato`s.

one of the better things about this dish was that you could salt it yourself.

Our trainee actually joked "save the salt for the next course, maby you will need it" 

unfortunally he was right.

Glased sweet breads, mushroom stock, hazelnuts,  different herbs.
Nice dish, but again lacking a bit of salt.

Garnish for the first dessert.
Nasturtium (again) with ant pure.

Blueberry sandwich between toast (again like one of the snacks)
This is not really a dessert for me, the taste was good though.
You where asked to cleanse your mouth between bites by the leaves and ant pure (ants being very acidic) this actually worked.

Final dessert:
Pine (again) parfait with juniper (again) powder, grilled pear, and pear "sauce)
Not being the biggest pear fan (unless raw) this wasnt really the best ending for me.
The pine "parfait" was airy and nice, and not really anything like a classic parfait, but had a nice taste.

Fudge of smoked bone marrow.
Lovely taste, very different

Potatochips, fennel seeds, and dark chocolate.
Salty, crispy and dark chocolate never been bad:)

Also we where served a "flødebolle" with yoghurt, being lovely as well.

All in all we had a nice evening at NOMA.
The service are good, nice wines, but when it comes to the food, well i was desapointed.
The snacks where nice, most of them different and very interesting.
But the menu itself, just didn`t blow me away.
Two none tasting dishes, and the rest actually just average just isn`t good enough on this level if you ask me.
Its different and very innovative, which i love, but the taste just isn't there.
And its a shame, cause I really wanted to be kicked off the fucking chair eating here, ore at least get 2 ore 3 dishes that was genius, unfortunately this just didn`t happened.
I do like the fact that they use insects though, and they do allot of fermented stuff, of which im a fan.
In general I could se allot of inspiration of NOMA, right now comes from Japan.
probably due to Redzepi`s travels to Japan.
Dont know if I would come back to NOMA, the good thing about this is that I didn`t pay myself though:)
Try it out, its still an experience!

Crazy visit!

So the day before this years MAD FOOD event, we had a special event at the restaurant I work at.

All the speakers, plus extra`s came around and had a cosy evening out, cooking up lovely produce for each other in the sun.

Joining in teams divided from the produce, i ended up cooking with, amongst others, Chido a mushroom farmer from Zimbabwe (with a inspirering background), patrick the butter maker (i now know how to make butter from creme fraice) and BTW this guy makes THE best butter in the world.

Roderick Sloan who dives in freaking icy water to get uni to NOMA.

Here is some photo`s from the event.

All ready!

Lovely beef

Live pike pearch

Icelandic arctic char

Two of the biggest chefs, Massimo and Ferran

Forager Roland, who came with a truckload of herbs.

Char with veggies grilled in soaked newspaper.

Normally if we are 4 here, its freaking crowded.

Ohhh yes

smoked and marinated beef

Ever seen "river cottage"

This cant go wrong!