Traditional Nordic cuisine possesses a certain purity and essential simplicity. Nowhere more so than at Noma, Rene Redzepi´s amazing restaurant in a lovingly restored warehouse in Copenhagen. If you haven´t yet made the pilgrimage to Noma, you can get a flavor of the culinary magic on offer within the pages of Noma: Time and place in Nordic cuisine (published by Phaidon). Take a look below at some of the amazing photography from the book by Ditte Isager.
Rene Redzepi and the team at Noma offer up their personal rendition of Nordic gourmet cuisine with an innovative gastronomic take on traditional cooking methods, fine Nordic produce and the legacy of our shared food heritage. Clearly they see it as something of a personal challenge to help bring about a revival of Nordic cuisine and let its distinctive flavors and particular regional character enrichen the world.
The Nordic region has been scoured to discover new sources of inspiration to ensure reliable sources of top-quality produce, be they costly ingredients or disregarded, more modest ingredients such as grains and pulses. Not content with merely sourcing the best, Noma do their own salting, smoking, pickling, and drying, as well as preparing their own vinegars and aquavits.
Redzepi operates at the cutting edge of gourmet cuisine, combining an unrelenting creativity and a remarkable level of craftsmanship with an inimitable and innate knowledge of the produce of the Nordic region- He has been widely credited with re-inventing Nordic cuisine. Noma was recognized as the best in the world by the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurant Award in 2010 and received the unique Chef's Choice award at the same ceremony in 2009.
Redzepi founded Noma in a derelict eighteenth-century warehouse in 2003 after working at both elBulli and The French Laundry. Diners are served exquisite concoctions, such as Newly-Ploughed Potato Field or The snowman from Jukkasjarvi, all painstakingly constructed to express their amazing array of Nordic ingredients.
Redzepi's fascination with giving his diners a real taste of their food's environment even extends to serving dishes on pebbles found in the same fields as his produce. His search for ingredients involves foraging amongst local fields for wild produce, sourcing horse-mussels from the Faroe Islands and the purest possible water from Greenland.
Photos by Ditte Isager
Noma: Time and place in Nordic cuisine by Phaidon
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