Laura's Travel Blog: I don't think anything can beat this... but we are still young (Noma, Part 2)

So for the rest of courses... these were slower coming courses. First up was the cooked fava beans with beach herbs. It had warm buttermilk like sauce and heart shaped herbs. In Anna’s words “I didn’t know I like lima beans!” Neither did I! This came with a very nice wine a 2011 Nature Domaine Jilien Meyer Nothalten-Alace. The “Bread Trap” also came out with the course. The bread was baked fresh in house and included virgin sour butter and pork fat solidified with bacon and potato crumb. Ridiculous! Best bread trap I’ve ever fell into!

Next course was locally picked berries (in fact the chef who brought us this meal told us he was leaving in 45 minutes to pick the mulberries near by) and burnt baby cucumbers. It has a chamomile “sauce” that was quite thin. The cucumbers were so “young” that they didn’t even have seeds yet. It was unbelievably good (okay, I’m going on record, because I’m honesty sounding like a broken record, everything was unbelievably good... even the stuff we weren’t fans of was unbelievably good!!!)

With the next course came a new wine, 2008 Riesling “Buntsandstien” Weingut Odinstal Wachenheim-Pfalz. The arrived with a Brown crab with tea soaked egg yolk and herbs (including beach plants) with a Norwegian ice-filtered seaweed broth. In my opinion easily the most beautiful dish all night and with was very tasty too!

The 16^th course was scallops sliced remarkably thin and dehydrated over night. Between two they made little grain and watercress sandwiches with squid ink sauce. The scallops where very thin and crispy but still very much tasted of scallops. The grains chewy and the squid ink was both beautiful and added a little something.

The next course was another one of our very favourites. I was caramelized cauliflower infused with pine. They were nice enough to let us know the pine was only for decoration and not to be eaten! They included cream made of whey that was infused with horseradish. Seriously Boom goes the dynamite awesome! Truly outstanding!

Next course came with a new wine which I honestly believe tasted like licking a school house... so not a fan! Of course I’ve mixed up the wines and I would hate to bash one of the good wines so I will list them at the end and then sort it out later.

This came with a new course Pike Perch with is a fresh water fish and it came wrapped in cabbage with elderberries. The first of the “actual” proteins, it was cooked PERFECTLY. Anna asked about how they get their fish and they had this great story about a local supplier.

Next was a new wine a sparkling wine (awesome) and it came with the most interactive course! So they brought you a hot skillet on a bed of hay so by the time it gets to your table is starts to smell like roasting hay (awesome!) and then they put oil in your skillet and you crack the egg in the dish! They set a timer for 1 min 20 seconds and then you met some pepper butter in the top of the skillet and sauté some greens. They give you salt to add and then they come by with a parsley sauce. There is a deep-fried potato chip swirl in the hay that you eat with it. Best egg I ever cooked!

Next course was another new wine. This one more fruity, with it came the Sweetbreads course. They were cooked sous-vide and then grilled hard on one side (the best side!) and with it came a mushroom broth, bitter greens, and celeriac. It also has elderberry, leeks young pine, and hazelnuts. SO YUMMY!

So let the dessert course begin! The first one was a blueberry “ice cream sandwich” and greens that had crushed ants in them. They we were very tasty and we later leaned that the greens on their own are very peppery. The ants really mellowed the flavour (now, that is a sentence I never thought I would ever say!)

The last course was “The Pear Tree” (that also came with a new wine) which had a Danish baby pear that had been prepared with aquavit and included lemon and thyme. It also came with a pine parfait (which was like a mouse only lighter and really cold) and has a pear puree. It was the perfect ending!

BUT THERE WAS MORE! They then brought us treats! Three little packages of crazy awesome. The first present was a set of bones that had been hollowed our and then filled with caramel. The caramel had a camp-fire smoky taste with a side of burn marshmallow. The second package was chocolate covered potato chips. They had a licorice like flavour. Very very good! The last package were two perfect Flødebollers (one of my favourite Danish treats) but instead of marzipan they had put a savoury cookie and the usual marshmallow like topping was this heavenly light fluffy (we later learned made from whey) and covered with milk chocolate.

BUT THERE WAS MORE! Because we were some of the last diners they invited us to see the kitchen!!! The pastry chef took us through the hot and cold passes and into the prep area (where they store the bones), out back where they keep a lot of the vegetables when it’s cooler, the grills/smokers (they have two green eggs!) and dehydrators. She then took upstairs to the experimental kitchen! They had a whole white board of ideas! They also have a very large area for all their herbs growing under the lights.

There is so much more (plus two full days of activities but I have to leave on a plane to Vienna in three hours so you are just going to have to wait :)

Before I forget the rest of the wines where: