New Scandinavian Cuisine

[troidz]

What do people think about the scandinavian cuisine? Restaurant Noma (www.noma.dk) is definitely a pioneer, with the manifestum (www.nordiskkoekken) Rene Redzepi, head chef and owner, made with other star chefs (Dahlgren, Valimaki, Hellström and the likes a beginning was made. Now the machine is rolling, Dahlgren is starting up a new restaurant with the nordic cuisine as main focus and others are following the example.

What is so special about this? No foie gras, up until recently there would be no truffles on the menu either, but now it is possible to get very good truffles from Gotland in Sweden. It's somewhat down to basis. Taking the ingredients and produce, looking at them for what they are now and looking back at what they were then, then taking the best of this with the best techniques of the modern kitchen and creating delicios light and clean food.

It's no more molecular than knowing that a piece of fish is better off vac packed and poached since it will keep it's juices, but it is still a wise way of cooking since you have to fully understand what you are working with and why.

To experience the real scandinavian cuisine, one must travel to Scandinavia (even though, not wuite popular due to all the hype about the drawings in a Danish newspaper) and discover that scandinavian cuisine is so much more than herring and pork on a piece of ryebread!

[Christopher Haatuft]

Im to new to the restaurant scene to really know anything about how things were, but I guess well be seeing a positve turn when it comes to local produce and ingredients. The norwegian government is pouring a lot of money in projects that will help farmers who earlier has relied heavely on subsidicing, change their business to adabt to todays needs. In effect, this can turn a low-profit dairyfarm to small scale quality cheese producer. The government is also trying to get a system similiar to the "DOP" stamp in Europe. I think in the very near future, this will come to show on the good restaurants menus. You can allready see this on menus like Bagatelles "landgris", a locally farmed gourmet-pig and Lucullus in Bergens halibut. Not so much a big trend in cuisine, but I think it will be defining for how the scandinavian cuisine will look in the future.

[Hector]

We used to joke over here that "new scandinavian" cooking was just serving the lingonberry jam from a squeeze flask instead out of a spoon. But I guess there's stuff happening.

I love the way local produce is used in new scandinavian cooking. At least here in Sweden, local produce has almost always been discriminated by the bigs of the food business. So you're not able to find local produce in any supermarket in many places. Even many restaurants hasn't been encouraging this either.

There's still many good places in Scandinavia that retains a local culinary culture and local specialities that is being produced, like many places in Norway, and on the island of Gotland.

I think it would be nice to see the country cooking of scandinavia being refined in a way like Fergus Henderson has refined much of the forgotten gems of Brittish cooking.

[Culinista]

I'm going to Denmark this week to check out the "New Nordic Food" for myself.

Some questions to play devil's advocae:

Is it new?

Is it Nordic?

The phrase seems to imply that there was an old Nordic cuisine...was there?

But given how poor people were in the old days, is this luxurious cuisine with traditional ingredients an oxymoron? Should restaurants charge exorbitant prices for Gotland truffles, which I understand are far inferior to Perigord ones? There is also something ironic about serving rich people bread made out of tree bark.

I think the trend of focusing on small local producers is a very healthy one. I always wondered why the Nordic countries seemed so dominated by large chains when traditional foodways seem to still thrive in people's imaginations. I'm very excited by the idea that Nordic chefs will start to notice their own spectacular and special products, not just foie gras.

[Christopher Haatuft]

Old nordic food is nothing spectacular in the comparison to french, italian, mexican etc, but we have a tradition of superior ingredients. Our seas has some of the best fish, our game is fantastic and our vegetables are getting there. By new nordiv cuisine, I think what people are trying to convey is that we dont have to look to Italy, Thailand or France for ingredients and inspiration. We just have to open our eyes and use the stuff that surrounds us. It also has to do with trying to develop a sustainable agriculture based not on what the goverments wants us to grow and eat, but what consumers what. Therefor the big challange is to find alternatives to traditional products such as balsamic vineagar, foie gras and chorizo. Can we create a totally unique cuisine solely on the stuff we find here in the north? I think restaurants such as Noma in Copenhagen and På Høyden in Bergen are on the right way.

[Mikeb19]

But given how poor people were in the old days, is this luxurious cuisine with traditional ingredients an oxymoron? Should restaurants charge exorbitant prices for Gotland truffles, which I understand are far inferior to Perigord ones? There is also something ironic about serving rich people bread made out of tree bark.

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Even French haute cuisine has it's roots in peasant cooking. IMO, perfect vegetables, game, and fish cooked perfectly is luxurious. You don't need rare ingredients to cook well.

What is haute cuisine anyhow? How do you define luxury? What makes a truffle better than a turnip?

Anyhow, it's nice to see chefs looking at their own regions, history, instead of trying to copy French and Italian food...