noma (Part Four)

Emily and I had a very nice Easter break. Please enjoy the fourth installment in an ongoing series recapping our epic noma experience. Sadly I won't be helping any Russian peasants with farm maintenance.



In case you missed it, here's parts one, two, and three.

Here we are, eleven bites later. I am a terrible liar, as the cabbage sandwich and sea urchin toast were definitely two to three biters. So in reality we're talking more like 15-17 bites. And there was also bread. So many bites. Sorry about all of that.

Next up, we have one of my favorites - both in presentation and deliciousness. It's apple and kelp.

That's an apple that has been slow cooked in sloe berry juice. Or is that sloe cooked in slow berry juice? I also didn't realize that you can use sloe for things other than sloe gin. This was sweet sweet candy. The stark ice-scape was also an excellent time. I felt quite stupid for leaving some of the core, should I have eaten it? We didn't get instructions with this one. Luckily we didn't try to eat the twigs and / or ice. We are smart.

I'd just like to take a moment to thank the excellent and far far far better put together blog starvefood for this excellent noma review / recap. It has been extremely helpful when it comes to going back and remembering the tiny details of a meal that happened weeks ago. Thanks again. You're the best.

Shrimp and Ramsom

Here a play on ravioli where the "shell" is made from ramsom - wild garlic greens - and the "filling" is tiny raw shrimp. The broth is made from yeast and it was topped with edible flowers. It felt like I was in some sort of far-east-asian water garden.

It is now time for...more insects!

Tartar and Ants

So yeah, this was awesome. We asked the chef, well, why ants? The answer was sadly not "well, why not ants!".

The story goes as such. A while back noma had a visiting Mexican chef that had previously done many things with ants. She was curious, how might Nordic ants compare to their Mexican counterparts? Answer, they have a bit of lemon-y flavor. I have no idea why.

I find it ridiculously awesome that I spent a good amount of time - in one of the best restaurants in the world - trying to get a single ant onto my fork.

I also have no idea how or where they "catch" the ants. Is that a sort of foraging? Or is it hunting? I guess that it's probably hunting. One can only hope that Ozzy is involved.

The last for today is the "Egg and Greens". Here we have more foraging - this doesn't look exactly like what we had, but the intent is the same. Fresh foraged flowers and greens with a very nice egg and a very nice broth. Earthy. Too earthy if you don't dig earthy. Again, beautiful.

Stay tuned for the end of the "main" courses tomorrow or Saturday.