Northern Rites

fig. a: curling scene, Montreal

We, here at "...an endless banquet," have been spouting off about the affinities between Québécois culture and Nordic culture, and especially about the notion of Québécois cuisine as Nordic cuisine, since at least 2006. In fact, that's one of the very reasons that René Redzepi and Claus Meyer's New Nordic Cuisine struck such a chord with us--it seemed to provide a model for how chefs here in Quebec might reinvent the local cuisine, pushing it in a direction that was more seasonal, more sustainable, less dependent on imports, and truer to the terroir. But Quebec remains a culture of Nordiques turned Snowbirds, a culture that in many ways has lost sight of its essential Nordic-ness. A people that had once proclaimed "mon pays c'est l'hiver," took to proclaiming "mon pays c'est la Floride/le Cuba/le Mexique/le Las Vegas" a long time ago. And, thus, in spite of our agitating, the New Nordic Cuisine has yet to take hold. Montreal is still a city of open-air hockey rinks and tobogganing, of Montréal en Lumière, Nuit blanche, and La Fête des neiges, but it's also the home of the Underground City, and it could definitely use some more Northern rites.

fig. b: old-school

With this in mind, Team Laloux--namely chef Seth Gabrielse and AEB's very own Michelle--has devised a night of Nordic cuisine at Pop!: a good, old-fashioned Scandinavian-style smörgåsbord, complete with all the trimmings. Think open-faced sandwiches and Scandinavian sweets.

fig. c: new-school

Think gravlax, Danish teak, and aquavit.

fig. d: Krogstad Aquavit

Starting to get the picture?

Michelle's been so excited about this event that her birthday turned into an extended Scandinavian food- and fact-finding mission (alas, not east to Copenhagen or Stockholm, but south [?] to New York City). And, let me tell you, she found plenty.

And when we returned she also found Scandinavian prezzies sent by a psychic friend (!).

fig. e: proof of E.S.P.

So Team Laloux is ready for you, and they'll be serving up Nordic delicacies both "new" and "classic" in the Danish Modern splendor of Pop! one night only (!), this Monday, March 28th.

Smörgåsbord!
Monday, March 28th
6:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Pop!
250, avenue des Pins E.
RSVP: (514) 287-1648
Facebook page

Skål!

aj

Nordic Rules

If you're the kind of person who follows such things, you probably already know that San Pellegrino's World's 50 Best Restaurants™ list was announced recently, and that the #1 spot went to Copenhagen's Noma, which moved up two slots from #3, leapfrogging both El Bulli and The Fat Duck.*

fig. a: time & space & Nordic cuisine

Now, if you're a regular reader of "...an endless banquet," you may remember that we ran a couple of posts about Noma and our experiments with chef René Redzepi's Nordic Cuisine back in 2008 (pt. 1 and pt. 2).

You're not the only one.

You wouldn't believe the number of times we've been contacted over the past two years by people who were desperate to get their hands on a copy of Noma: Nordic Cuisine and willing to pay top dollar to purchase ours. Thing is, we don't actually own a copy--never have. We had one on long-term loan from a good friend (the kind of friend who lets you borrow an extremely rare, extremely expensive cookbook for 6-12 months at a time [sometimes more than once!]). And even if we did, we certainly wouldn't sell it. No, not even to you.

Anyway, we've gotten a lot of requests. And, not surprisingly, with Noma's recent coronation having driven its prestige to dizzying new heights, over the last couple of weeks we've gotten a whole lot more.

We've also had people who, unable to get their hands on Noma: Nordic Cuisine, but eager to give Redzepi's cuisine a whirl, have fallen back on some of our featured recipes. Few have been as public about it as Christopher Hirst, however. Hirst wrote a snarky little piece in The Independent on the weekend called "The Day I Cooked Like the Best Restaurant in the World" that relied heavily on AEB and another online source.

I think this is the very first time AEB has ever been referred to as a "transformative strainer."** Hopefully, it's also the last. Then again, "the blog The Independent called a 'transformative strainer'!," has a pretty nice ring to it.

Luckily for all you Nomavores out there, it looks as though a new Noma book is on the horizon. Hirst reports that a book called Noma: Time & Space in Nordic Cuisine will be published in the UK in September. Sure enough, Amazon.com & Amazon.ca are showing the same book (published by Phaidon) slated to be released on September 29, 2010.

Will Noma: Time & Space in Nordic Cuisine help inspire a nouvelle cuisine nordique on this side of the Atlantic? One can only hope.

aj

* If you're Canadian and you follow such things, you probably already know that Canada didn't exactly "own the podium" this time around--not a single Canadian restaurant made the top 50, although two Canuck restaurants made the top 100.

** In addition to having gotten frustrated with some of the intricacies (and absurdities) of Redzepi's recipes, Hirst was evidently skeptical about some of our adaptations.

The one major liberty we took in our "Noma 2: Manic Cuisine" post was fully documented at the time: not having any "balsamic plum vinegar" on hand when we made a variation on Redzepi's Cured Brisket of Pork recipe, we improvised a concoction of balsamic vinegar and ume plum vinegar that we thought might simulate the flavors of the original. Of course, we've never had the pleasure of trying balsamic plum vinegar, so we're not sure if we succeeded, but we can tell you that the end result was certifiably delicious. The other offending ingredient--toasted peanut oil--did appear in the original Noma recipe, oddly enough. We tried the same preparation with toasted sesame oil and it tasted great too, so we offered that as a possible substitute.

Oh, yeah: Hirst wasn't crazy about our marriage of Redzepi's spice bread and his truffled poached egg, a combo that doesn't appear in Noma: Nordic Cuisine, but is based on elements that do. Hilariously, the photograph that accompanied Hirst's article was one of him fussing with this "complete bugger" of a preparation.

Noma 2: Manic Cuisine

It may be March already, but with Montreal still in process of digging itself out from under yet another blizzard, it seems like an appropriate time to complete our Noma series...

We may have started slowly with Noma: Nordic Cuisine, but when it came to putting it to the test a second time, we threw all caution into those arctic February winds.

Now some of you hotshots out there who've skimmed ahead might be thinking to yourselves, "Two courses--that's it?" Yeah, that's it. But as you'll notice once you read things through carefully, there are a number of different parts to each course, we started the meal at about 5:30 on a weeknight (except for the Day 1 and Day 2 steps, of course), and you see where it lists "chicken stock" down below? Well, for some reason we decided to make our own that very night. Making our own chicken stock from scratch isn't all that weird for us--we do so with frequency--however, making chicken stock simultaneous to the preparation of the very meal that calls for chicken stock in the first place is a litttle strange, even for us. I point this out not out of some pathetic desire to impress you, dear readers, but rather to convey the ambience in the kitchen on that particular night, an ambience that could quite succinctly be described as "manic." Not "manic-bad," mind you, just "manic." And, actually, once we got into the swing of things that night, we were able to relax--considerably. The meal was so labor-intensive for a weekday dinner for two that it was laughable, so laugh we did, especially when the recipes forced us to muster up a little on-the-spot ingenuity (you'll see what I mean momentarily). Still, we were eating by 8:30, so that's not so bad.

We'd selected our menu based on two criteria: we definitely wanted to choose recipes that were seasonal, seasonality being such an important part of the Noma philosophy, and we definitely wanted to choose recipes whose ingredients we could actually find in Montreal (or invent in our kitchen, as it turns out), because unlike the folks at Noma, we weren't in a position to start establishing trade agreements with Greenlandic fisherman. Besides, Noma is all about regionality (albeit pan-Nordic regionality), so we didn't see the point in attempting to track down authentic Faroe Islands langoustines or whatnot. So we settled on Cured Brisket of Pork with Potato Skins and Beer-Cured Onions, with a stripped down version of Sautéed Bay Scallops with Leeks, Dill, and Crème of Egg Yolks as an appetizer. If our logic here isn't clear, it went something like this: a) Quebec is definitely a pork culture, it's also a potato culture, a beer culture, and an onion culture, and we love all of the above, so, all right... Check! b) bay scallops are a little hard to find around here, but sea scallops sure aren't, seeing as the St-Lawrence basin is one of the world's finest sea scallop habitats, so that works, and so do leeks, dill, and eggs, and we love all of those ingredients too, so it's too bad we're going to scratch the leeks, but it'll sure make things easier... Check! Truth be told, more than anything it was the juniper berries--a spice typical of traditional Québécois cuisine--that sold me on the pork, and then we just took it from there.

Now, if you want make the Noma meal exactly the way we did, you're going to have to allot three days to the cause, but, as you'll see, there's a simplified version way down below that can be fully realized in the space of just a few hours that's also very satisfying, so you may very well want to follow that path instead.

fig. a: scallops by Noma as interpreted by us

Sautéed Scallops with Dill and Crème of Egg Yolks

seared scallops:

4 medium-size scallops
sugar and salt
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
1 tbsp of butter cut into 4 nubs
4 rosemary leaves

Toss the scallops in a little bit of sugar and salt and let them marinate for a few hours or, preferably, overnight. When the scallops have marinated, heat the grapeseed oil in a well-seasoned or nonstick pan over medium-high heat. When the oil has reached temperature, sear the scallops gently on both sides--you want them to have a golden crust and no more. When you turn the scallops over onto their second side, place a butter nub and a rosemary leaf on each. When the second side has a nice golden crust, you're ready to serve.

dill oil:

1 tbsp dill
1 tbsp flat-leaf parsley
grapeseed oil

Blanch the dill and the parsley in salted water. Cool the herbs down with a cold-water or ice-water bath. Wring them dry and place them in a blender. Add just enough oil (roughly 4-6 oz.) to blend the herbs into a loose purée. Strain the oil with a fine mesh and discard the solids.

crème of egg yolks:

3 boiled egg yolks (yolks from eggs that have been boiled for precisely 9 minutes)
35 g / 3 tbsp capers-brine (the brine from a jar of capers)
25 ml / 5 tsp chicken stock, preferably homemade
20 g / 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 medium carrot, peeled and boiled
200 ml / 3/4 cup grapeseed oil
1 tsp toasted peanut or sesame oil
salt and lemon juice

Blend the egg yolks with the capers-brine, the chicken stock, the breadcrumbs, and the carrot. Pour in the grapeseed oil a little bit at a time and continue blending. Then, using your judgment, add the peanut oil, the salt, and the lemon juice until you have an extremely tasty but loose purée (keep in mind that the capers-brine is very, well, briny, so you may not need any salt at all). Strain the crème.

assembly:

Place two seared scallops on a plate. Place a flamboyant smear of the egg crème alongside. Drizzle some dill oil around the scallops in a circular pattern. Drizzle a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar in the same circular pattern as the dill oil. Serve immediately.

Serves 2 as an appetizer.

[adapted slightly from Noma: Nordic Cuisine]

At this point, if you skim ahead just a bit you'll notice that Noma's "Cured Brisket of Pork" has metamorphosed into "Cured Pork Belly." We based this adjustment on the accompanying photograph in Noma: Nordic Cuisine, on the fact that the cookbook is littered with minor mis-translations, and on simple common sense.

fig. b: Noma does pork

Cured Pork Belly with Potato Skins and Beer-Cured Onions

1 kg / 2.2 lb pork belly
1/2 tbsp juniper berries
1/2 tbsp coriander seeds
1/2 tbsp green anise
1/2 tbsp caraway
1 rosemary branch, leaves removed, minced
1 thyme branch, minced
14 g / 2 tbsp salt
lard, preferably smoked
grapeseed oil

Two days before your meal, toast the spices in a dry pan till the caraway and anise is just golden and the combination becomes highly aromatic.

fig. c: toasting spices

Crush the spices and the salt together in a mortar to make a rub. Clean the pork belly and dry it. Using your fingers, coat the pork belly on all sides with the rub.

On Day 2, preheat the oven to 80º C. Clean the pork belly of the spices. Cover the pork with a thin layer of lard and put it in a roasting pan. Put the meat in the oven and cook slowly for 12 hours.

Remove the brisket and place under pressure (i.e., under a cutting board) to compress it and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

On Day 3, score the rind of the pork belly and then slice it into oblong pieces. Sauté these pieces slowly in a little bit of oil over medium heat until they are crispy and warm at the edges.

sauce:

3 tbsp balsamic plum vinegar (or 3 tbsp "balsamic plum vinegar," i.e., 2 tbsp ume plum vinegar mixed with 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar)
1/2 rosemary branch
4 juniper berries
50 ml / 3 tbsp + 1 tsp apple juice
200 ml / 3/4 cup chicken stock, preferably homemade
100 ml / 1/3 cup+ weissbier or blanche

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, reduce the vinegar with the rosemary and the juniper berries for a couple of minutes. Add the apple juice, bring the mixture back to a boil, and reduce for another couple of minutes. Add the chicken stock and the weissbier and reduce the mixture down to half its original volume. Strain the sauce and season to taste.

fig. d: marinated onions

beer-cured onions:

20 pearl onions, blanched then separated into shells
200 ml / 3/4 cup beer (use a good lager)
90 g / 1/2 cup honey
1 thyme branch
5 juniper berries
110 g / 3/4 cup balsamic apple vinegar (or 110 g "balsamic apple vinegar," i.e., apple vinegar mixed with balsamic vinegar in a 2:1 ratio)

Boil the beer, the honey, the thyme and the juniper berries together and reduce for 5 minutes. Take the marinade off the heat and add the balsamic apple vinegar or "balsamic apple vinegar." Pour the marinade over the onion skins and let them steep in the liquid for at least 30 minutes. Don't throw the thyme and juniper berries away--you'll want to decorate your plates with them.

fig. e: our potatoes as they went into the oven

crispy potato peels:

1 kg /2.2 lb small potatoes, scrubbed
oil for frying, such as grapeseed or peanut

Bake the potatoes in the oven at 160º C until they are just tender. Take them out of the oven, allow them to cool briefly, and cut them into halves. Gently and carefully so as to preserve their shape, scoop the potato flesh out of the peels and save for another purpose (i.e., tomorrow morning's home fries). Take the peels and fry them in oil heated to 160º C until they are crispy. You may have to do this in multiple batches. Remove the peels from the oil and place them on paper towel to let them dry. Season with salt.

assembly:

Place one piece of pork belly on each plate and surround each piece with potato skins and onions. Garnish with juniper berries and thyme and/or rosemary and drizzle some sauce over the entire ensemble. Serve immediately.

Serves 4.

[recipe adapted from Noma: Nordic Cuisine]

The results were nothing if not spectacular, and several of the component parts were truly outstanding (the crème of egg yolks and the crispy potato skins, but especially the beer-cured onions), but there was one major problem: while the scallops were a total knockout, the pork belly hadn't quite worked out. The flavor was there in spades, there was nothing wrong with the approach, but for some reason the 12-hour extra slow & low roast had dried that poor pork belly out. So the pork, the star attraction, was okay, and we still enjoyed it--after three days, we kinda had to--but it was far from phenomenal, far from the succulent pork extravagance we were expecting. Longtime readers will know that we've had all kinds of success with roasting pork for eight-hour spells at a considerably higher temperature, so I think I'd just adjust the cooking time--no more than eight hours?--if I tried this recipe again, but let's not kid ourselves: we were a little disappointed.

Nevertheless, the next day the leftovers made for a pretty great sandwich consisting of pork belly, beer-cured onions, arugula, mayonnaise, and that special sauce in a hard roll. It looked something like this

fig. f: pork belly sandwich

and it made for a fine sandwich. Michelle quipped that it looked like Nordic banh-mi, but I wasn't willing to go quite that far.

And while I was eating my pork belly sandwich the next day, I got the idea of using the same basic formula--that aromatic rub, those beer-cured onions--to prepare a dish that would cut down on my prep time considerably and that was guaranteed to turn out perfectly. I was pretty sure that you could use that basic formula to great effect with a pork roast or a pork tenderloin, but the fundamental idea behind Noma's dish had to do with working magic with a lowly cut of meat, so I went with a pork chop--a plain, old pork chop.

A few days later, I whipped up a half version of Noma's pork rub

1/4 tbsp juniper berries
1/4 tbsp coriander seeds
1/4 tbsp green anise
1/4 tbsp caraway
1/2 rosemary branch, leaves removed, minced
1/2 thyme branch, minced
7 g / 1 tbsp salt

and rubbed it all over two healthy pork chops, then I refrigerated them overnight to let the rub work its charms. The next day I took my pork chops out of the refrigerator, wiped the rub off, and allowed them to reach something approaching room temperature, I made some more of Noma's special sauce, quickly braised some parsnips, mixed a salad, and took the leftover beer-cured onions from our previous adventure out of the refrigerator, and when the pork chops were at room temperature, I heated 1 tbsp grapeseed oil in a well-seasoned skillet over medium-high heat. Roughly ten minutes later--including about eight or nine minutes of cooking time for the chops--we sat down to this:

fig. g: Noma-style pork chop

This version maybe wasn't quite as dramatically Nordic as our previous meal had been, but it also wasn't as manic. And it was good. Damn good.

aj

Noma 1: Definitely not your average morning Danish, rev. ed.

fig. a: Noma: Nordic Cuisine

There's something downright exhilarating about René Redzepi and Claus Meyer's Noma: Nordic Cuisine (2006). It begins with the photographs that grace the cover and continue throughout the text. Sometimes stark (like the photo above), oftentimes almost absurdly picturesque (like this photograph),

fig. b: landscape by Noma 1

and at times even sublime, much of the impetus behind Noma's photography has to do with situating the restaurant's cuisine within Denmark's formidable landscape, and the impression one gets is of a countryside that's equal measures forbidding and abundant. Thus, alongside pictures of Greenland's desolate glaciers (what remains of them),

fig. c: landscape by Noma 2

you get pictures of lovable old Danish hippies carefully collecting herbs

fig. d: lovable old Danish hippie

that may very well end up on Noma's artfully composed plates--in this case, Hay-baked Celery Root, Black Pudding and Yellow Archangel, the first of the book's winter recipes.

fig. e: Hay-baked Celery Root, Black Pudding and Yellow Archangel

The thing is, according to Noma's philosophical outlook, Greenland's glaciers and southern Denmark's countryside don't form the strict binary opposition one might think they do. Where others see mountains of ice creeping across the landscape, the folks at Noma see "a rich flora and fauna, with crowberries, reindeer, grouse and musk ox." Bounty is in the eye of the beholder.

Now, if you've noted a little Nordic Pride in my description of the Noma cookbook, you're definitely onto something. Already, when the restaurant first began to take shape, there was the idea that a restaurant housed in an old warehouse that had once been part of the Royal Greenland Trade Enterprise and that would soon be the new site of the Nordatlantens Brygge (North Atlantic House) should have a vision that was pan-Nordic in orientation. But over the next nine months, in the lead-up to the restaurant's launch, Noma's vision really took on form. For one thing, Claus Meyer, the owner, and René Redzepi and Mads Refslund, the restaurant's two chefs at the time, took an extensive trip across the north, including jaunts to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, to search for ingredients and begin the process of making the contacts necessary to establish an alternative to the distribution networks available back in Copenhagen. The trip was a revelation, exceeding all expectations, and immediately the three "gastronomic explorers" knew they were onto a good thing, even if it might mean a lot of extra work.

By the time they returned to Copenhagen and began to work in earnest on what would become Noma's cuisine their vision had begun to develop into a full-fledged philosophy. Among its central tenets: take the Mediterranean notion of terroir, as well as the cultivation of biodiversity and the celebration of seasonality that goes along with it, and use it to utterly reject Southern European cuisine and its dominance of fine dining internationally. In other words, develop a cuisine "built on a basis of traditional and non-traditional Nordic ingredients," as Claus Meyer noted after one early planning meeting, one that would give "expression to the seasons' changes in a maximum way, taking things all the way to the limit." By March 2004, just four months into Noma's life, this sort of feistiness, this proudly anti-Mediterranean attitude, was already paving the way to the Nordic Cuisine Symposium, where in true Danish fashion--this is the same country, after all, that gave birth to Dogme 95--they banged together a 10-point manifesto that set the parameters for this New Nordic Cuisine. There were twelve signatories to this manifesto, representing Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Greenland, and René Redzepi's signature stands front and center.

fig. f: manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine

Anyway, there's a lot here that appeals to us here at "...an endless banquet": seasonality and a focus on indigenous ingredients, Nordic pride and the development of a cuisine that's both innovative and steeped in tradition and that truly represents the region, and, yes, even a manifesto. We've said it before and we're going to say it again: for all the talk about Montreal's "European" flavor, this city, this province, is often at its best when it readily acknowledges its peculiar Nordic character (let's not forget that Montreal is at roughly the same latitude as Milan). Noma: Nordic Cuisine offers a virtual blueprint for how to develop a region's cuisine, how to create a cuisine that truly reflects the terroir, and how to do this within the context of a northerly climate.*

That said, Noma: Nordic Cuisine did present us with a couple of problems. First of all, I would characterize it as being one of those cookbooks that's more interested in spreading the reputation of a particular restaurant and its chef and in communicating with other top chefs than it is in communicating with the amateur. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this approach, of course, but it often results in vagueness when it comes to articulating recipes, and that's certainly the case with Noma. Take the Hay-Baked Celery Root recipe, for instance, which begins like this: "Light the hay with a match, some place away from the kitchen, and burn off the first bit of smoke." The ideas are there, and they're frequently brilliant, but you might have to be a chef (or a psychic) to figure out how to bring them to life. Secondly, Noma's tireless efforts when it came to tracking down indigenous Nordic ingredients means that quite a few of the recipes are impossible to replicate without access to their alternative distribution networks. It might be a little difficult to find local sources for musk ox, yellow archangel, and seakale, but Noma certainly leaves you with the desire to broaden your repertoire of regional and indigenous ingredients, and, overall, there's a surprising amount of overlap between the seasonal specialties there and here: fiddlehead ferns, lobster, hare, jerusalem artichokes, oysters, pears, ramps, and so on.

When it came to actually putting Noma: Nordic Cusine to use, however, we started off very tentatively. Michelle took elements from a couple different recipes and paired them, creating a new breakfast combo all her own. The first was a wonderful spice bread recipe, one that had that exact Northern European spice bread flavor that Michelle had been seeking but had otherwise failed to find. The second was a novel and, quite frankly, ingenious approach to the poaching of an egg, one that allowed for the egg to be aromatized as it cooks--in this case with white truffle oil.** She then added a caramelized scallion as a finishing touch.

fig. g: spice bread, truffled egg, caramelized scallion

Spice Bread (metric)

5 g cinnamon
5 g clove
2 g nutmeg
2 g green anise
150 g rye flour
150 g wheat flour
20 g baking powder
50 g wholewheat flour
100 g honey, preferably chestnut honey
150 g maple syrup
125 g whole milk
125 g eggs
fresh rosemary
butter and salt

Preheat the oven to 160º C. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Crush the spices and sift them over the dry ingredients. Stir in the honey and maple syrup, then the milk, and finally the eggs. Place in a buttered loaf pan and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 min. Let cool on a rack.

Spice Bread (imperial)

1 1/2 cups rye flour
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp cloves
1 tbsp nutmeg
1 tbsp green anise
1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp honey
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup milk
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 325° F. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Crush the spices and sift them over the dry ingredients. Stir in the honey and maple syrup, then the milk, and finally the eggs. Place in a buttered loaf pan and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 min. Let cool on a rack.

Truffled eggs

1 egg per person
truffle oil
microwaveable plastic wrap

The basic method is as follows. Line a coffee cup with a small piece of plastic wrap, making a bowl. Take a small amount of truffle oil and spread it on the bottom. Carefully break an egg into the cup, gather the edges of the plastic up around the egg and twist it tightly closed. Secure it with twine or a twist tie. Repeat with as many eggs as are needed. Bring a small saucepan of water to simmer and maintain its temperature. Drop the eggs into the water and let them poach about 4 minutes. Carefully remove them from the water and gently take off the plastic wrap.

[both recipes from Noma: Nordic Cuisine]

To serve:

Lightly toast the bread and spread it with butter. Top with an egg and a caramelized scallion, season with salt and pepper, and enjoy.

This initial experiment having turned out a smashing success (if a modest one), we decided to take bigger steps with Noma: Nordic Cuisine the next time around.

To be continued...

am/km

P.S. If you'd like to read an actual firsthand account of what it's like to dine at Noma (complete with a whole slew of beautiful photographs)--which just received two Michelin stars in their Main Cities of Europe 2008 guide--check out Very Good Food's in-depth report.

P.S. 2 May 4, 2008: Now The New York Times has published a review of Noma as part of a piece on New Danish Cuisine in Copenhagen. Check it out here.

* More thoughts on cuisine and le grand nord: Just two week ago I attended a conference where one of the presenters, a local poet, waxed poetic (what else, right?) about Quebec's essentially Northern spirit, about the Idea of North that lies at the heart of Québécois culture. Well, as much as I wish this were true on some level, I couldn't help but think that the same culture that declared "Mon pays c'est l'hiver" some forty years ago, has spent the last 50-60 winters focusing its collective energies and fantasies southwards, towards places like Florida and Las Vegas. And, frankly, cuisine here in la belle province oftentimes suffers from the same fixation, which is why Montreal's standout restaurants are the ones that are the most fiercely independent, the ones that recognize that not only does it pay to support local and regional producers, doing so can be a source of inspiration and a sure-fire way to put yourself on the map. Does this mean we're advocating some kind of entrenched provincialism when it comes to cuisine? Of course not, but if you're going to transpose the cuisine of northern Italy or of southwestern France on the Québécois milieu, why not transpose the strong sense of terroir that goes hand-in-hand with those traditions?

** "Whoa! White truffle oil?!? Isn't that as Mediterranean as it comes?" Not at all. Locally harvested truffles figure prominently on Noma's autumn menu. Of course, the truffle we used was Italian, but that's another matter. Those fabulous Tennessean truffles we've been hearing about haven't made their way north in the form of truffle oil yet, to our knowledge.

chez les Nordiques, pt. 2

For those of you who’ve been sitting on the edge of your seats, just dying to hear how that gravlax turned out… Well, it was absolute heaven. I mean, just look at it:



When I set out to make it, I compared a half a dozen or so different recipes before finally settling on a what I deemed to be a classic version: Mark Bittman’s Salt-and-Sugar Cured Salmon from Fish: The Complete Guide To Buying and Cooking. I found all kinds of interesting variations on the Swedish original, but for my first gravlax I wanted to start with the basics. Bittman’s recipe was exactly what I was looking for: it includes all the staples—salmon, a roughly 50/50 salt to sugar ratio, and dill—and it also includes spirits. His ingredients list looks like this:

1 3- to 4-pound salmon, weighed after cleaning and beheading, filleted, skin on
3 tbsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 good-size bunch dill, roughly chopped, stems and all
1 tbsp spirits

Most recipes for gravlax—including Bittman’s, as you can see—work on the assumption that you have a whole salmon in front of you, either because you just caught it, or because you’re going to be feeding a sizable party a suitably substantial appetizer. Since I was only making this gravlax for the two of us, and because I was experimenting, I used a small 8-oz fillet instead. My variation went as follows:

1 8-oz salmon fillet, skin on
1/2 tbsp Maldon salt
1/3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/8-1/4 cup fresh dill, roughly chopped, stems and all
1/2 tbsp Hendrick’s gin

As you can see, I didn’t hold back on the seasonings. Using Bittman’s recipe as a blueprint, I went with what felt right. I wasn’t worried about using more salt than Bittman recommended because I was using Maldon salt, which has a finer edge to it. Originally I intended to make my gravlax with vodka, but when I realized that I didn’t have any on-hand and that I did have some Hendrick’s Gin , my decision was made. All of a sudden it all made sense. Those beautiful Hendrick’s aromatics were exactly what I was looking for, and because of that, as with the salt, I wasn’t worried about using a little extra. If you can’t get Hendrick’s gin where you live (we had to import ours ourselves from New York City last year) and you want to work with gin, go for something that’s similarly aromatic, like Bombay Sapphire. Finally, by all means, don’t skimp on the salmon. Ideally, you want to start with a wild salmon. It’s going to cost extra, but if you’re only working with an 8-oz fillet, like I did, it won’t be that expensive, and with gravlax a little goes a long way. Whatever you decide when it comes to type, make sure your salmon is “spanking fresh,” as Bittman puts it. There's absolutely no point in using anything less.

At last, the instructions:

Rinse and pat your fillet dry, lay it on a plate skin-side down, then sprinkle it with the salt, sugar, and pepper. Spread the dill on top of the fillet, covering the top as completely as possible, then sprinkle the gin all over it. Wrap the fillet tightly in plastic wrap. Place the fillet in a small plate and then sandwich another plate on top of it, using something that weighs about one pound (a bag of black-eyed peas worked perfectly) to press the top plate down (thereby pressing the salmon). Place your gravlax-in-the-making in the refrigerator.

Open the package every 12 to 24 hours and baste the salmon all over with the juices, putting it back in the refrigerator tightly wrapped each time. After 2 or 3 days (I waited about 60 hours), when the salmon has lost its translucence, slice it thinly as you would smoked salmon, making sure to follow the bias and to avoid the skin. Serve.

Some recipes recommend that you wipe off the dill and pepper first, and maybe even rinse it (although Bittman doesn’t), but I found this completely unnecessary. I just started slicing the gravlax —dill, spices, and all—and served it up on Finn Crisps with fresh chervil.

It’s hard to describe just how perfect this gravlax turned out. It’s firm and perfectly cured, it’s full of flavor but yet has a real delicacy to it. It’s so easy to make, but it nevertheless gives you great satisfaction—probably because you have to attend to it for a couple of days, probably because you have to be patient. I can’t imagine how satisfying it would have been had I actually caught my salmon myself.

aj

chez les Nordiques, pt. 1

With not one but two tests currently underway at "...an endless banquet" it's starting to be like Canada's Test Kitchen around here or something. Okay, not exactly, but this time of year that's the rhythm a lot of us get into in this part of the world: a lot more experimentation in the kitchen, a lot more staying in and reading--that kind of thing.

Now, speaking of northern climes and life in the Hyperborean Metropolis--as Montreal used to proudly hail itself--coverage of Montreal often focuses attention on how "European" Montreal is. Gourmet's new special issue on Montreal, with one of its coverlines boldly proclaiming that Montreal is "North America's Most European City," is just the latest and most high-profile example. Oftentimes, however, such descriptions of Montreal and its European-ness are merely an almost knee-jerk reaction to things like the city's linguistic landscape, its overwhelmingly Catholic past, what remains of its stone architecture in the vicinity of the Old Port, and its high proportion of French restaurants, and what people fail to see is just how profoundly North American Montreal is. Of course, people have tended to have a similar reaction to New Orleans over the years, and in both cases this sense of European-ness is based on a failure to understand that the history of New France wasn't exactly a simple blip on the North American timeline. Montreal does have a lot of French restaurants--that's obvious--but as Gourmet rightly pointed out, the best of the lot draw from a vision that is at once global in outlook and passionately local, a vision certainly inspired by France, but one that is proudly North American (with an emphasis on the "North," perhaps). They're not museum pieces, they're not French restaurants in the generic sense (although there are certainly plenty of those around here as there are in most cities of the size and "sophistication" of Montreal), they're restaurants that are very much alive and are contributing to an ever-expanding sense of what cuisine--both French and North American--might mean. And while Gourmet didn't exactly dwell on Montreal's winters--it's pretty clear that the issue was drawn up and produced in the summer and fall of last year--its "Let it Snow" feature managed to capture the region's essentially Nordic character, something that profiles of the city generally overlook or elide (depending on whether they're produced by out-of-towners or locals). If the notion of terroir is crucial to understanding a region's cuisine, as the French certainly believe, than the Montreal region's unique terroir helps one understand how and why the culture here is distinctive, and why it's so different from that of France. In other words, Montreal's most European qualities might not actually be where people see them.

A case in point: gravlax.



As Alan Davidson has outlined, gravlax originated in Sweden in medieval times. The first references to the dish come in the way of surnames and are based on the Scandinavian custom of naming someone according to their profession or métier. The name itself combines the Swedish word for salmon with a word signifying burial, indicating the traditional manner used in the production of gravlax. Thus, records for one Olafuer Gravlax who lived in Jämtland back in 1348 suggest that gravlax was being manufactured in that region according to tradition--which involved burying the salmon, or other fish, in barrels or in holes in the ground, then letting it ferment--at least as far back as the mid-14th century. There were essentially two varieties of gravlax--one which was allowed to ferment for a matter of days, while the other was cured for months. The terms gravlax and surlax appear to have been interchangeable for both types, although "sour salmon" appears to have been the more appropriate descriptor for the long-cured variety. Of course, the modern process for making gravlax is much simpler and much less involved than either the short-cure or long-cure versions that were traditional--burial is unnecessary, and you need only cold-cure the salmon, or other fish, for 24-36 hours to get a good result.

Now, the fact that gravlax has become a featured item on menus around town [the photo above features a gravlax plate I recently had at Reservoir that consisted of Zubrowka-cured salmon, roasted potatoes, fresh greens, and Zubrowka-laced sour cream, just one of the many reasons we feel Reservoir is the city's best brunch spot at the moment], is not exactly unprecedented within the current North American dining scene. Gravlax has been having a bit of a revival among North America's top chefs in recent years, largely because of the freedom the dish affords--as the website for the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C. puts it, somewhat stiffly, "Gravlax... gives plenty of choices to follow your own preference of flavors... Have fun with it." The difference here is that salmon is native to the region and has been a staple ever since the region was first settled (in fact, salmon is certainly one of the reasons the region was settled in the first place), and that, similarly, the curing of salmon has been an important part of the culture here for hundreds and hundreds of years, long before Cartier charted the St. Lawrence. In other words, gravlax may not be native to the region--although, who knows, the Iroquois Nation may very well have had their own version of gravlax in addition to the smoked and wind-dried forms of curing they were using--but it fits in well with the local culture for exactly the same reasons that it took hold in the Scandinavian world. What makes things interesting is that this parallel culture of salmon fishing and salmon curing was first developed through the interaction (I'm being diplomatic) of non-Northern Europeans with indigenous peoples.

With all of this mind, I set about starting to experiment with gravlax myself just the other day. Inspired by my friend Caro's father's gravlax, and by Davidson's claim that "the preparation of gravlax is customarily one of the household duties allocated to men," I'd been wanting to try my hand at making some for quite some time. I also wanted to develop a recipe that would finally make good my Maldon salt promise. The results? You'll just have to be patient. I'm working on a 48-60 hour curing period.

aj

Note: the icicles photograph at the top wasn't taken this weekend, but it could have been.