Featured: NOMA Cookbook recipe by René Redzepi
Gracious thanks to Phaidon Press for offering this complete NOMA recipe for fans of the super kitchen machine known as Thermomix. Consider this your invitation to sample an authentic Redzepi dessert. It’s one of over 90 recipes (with 200+ lavish color photographs) contained in the book, each served at restaurant Noma. In addition, the book reveals much of the philosophy and method of Redzepi’s two-Michelin-starred restaurant, where Thermomix is used regularly.
Are you a Noma fan who has sampled this dish in Copenhagen? Let us know! Is there a Thermomix fan (with a well stocked kitchen) who will attempt the recipe and tell us about it?
Blueberries Surrounded By Their Natural Environments
Adapted* from Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine
(October 4, 2010 $49.95 US, $55 CDN, $69.95 AU, £26)
* This recipe requires advanced techniques, accurate measurements using the metric system, specialist equipment and professional experience to achieve good results.
Serves 4
Blueberry sorbet
450g sugar
60g glucose
625g water
50g blueberry purée
200g blueberries
50g spruce shoots
3.5g gelatin
Spruce ice cream
38g sugar
60g trimoline*
120g egg yolks
150g cream
435g full fat (whole) milk
20g milk powder
2g gelatin
125g spruce shoots**
Spruce granita***
145g sugar
525g water
425g spruce shoots
440g sorrel
Xanthan gum****
Crispy brioche
450g full fat (whole) milk
40g dried yeast
1kg tipo ‘00’ flour
17g salt
1 egg
35g sugar
150g butter, softened
Thyme oil
10 bunches thyme (to make 85g when blanched)
Small bunch parsley (to make 25g when blanched)
110g grapeseed oil
For Serving
28 leaves wood sorrel
8 sprigs heather
Butter, for sautéing
*Trimoline is a type of sugar-based sweetener, used by many chefs in baking and in sorbets
**Spruce shoots are shoots of the spruce tree
***Granita is a frozen preparation, traditionally served as a dessert, made with water and a syrup base.
****Xanthan gum is a product derived from fermented starch, used as a thickening agent and to maintain solids in suspension within a liquid
Blueberry sorbet
Mix the sugar, glucose and water in a pan, heat to a syrup, then cool. Add the purée, the fresh berries and the spruce shoots, blend and strain. Heat a very small amount of the berry mixture. Bloom the gelatin, then dissolve into the warm mixture and add to the rest. Place in Paco containers* in the refrigerator to set.
Spruce ice cream
Whisk together the sugar, trimoline and egg yolks. Heat the cream, milk and milk powder in a pan to 80°C (178°F) and pour it over the egg mixture. Pour back into the pans and cook, stirring, to make a custard. Bloom** the gelatin, add and cool. When the mixture is cold, blend the spruce shoots into it and strain.
Spruce granita
Heat the water and sugar to make a syrup. Cool, blend with the spruce shoots and sorrel and pass through a fine sieve (strainer). Calculate the total weight and weigh out 0.1% of the quantity in xanthan gum. Sprinkle the xanthan into a small amount of the liquid and blend it until absorbed. Combine the 2 liquids and freeze in a deep tray. Once frozen, scrape to a powder with a fork.
Crispy brioche
Heat the milk to room temperature and dissolve the yeast in it. Add the flour, salt, eggs and sugar and mix the dough thoroughly. Add the butter while mixing and let the mixture prove (rise) for an hour. Knock back (punch down) the dough and let it prove again for an hour. Grease a loaf tin, transfer the dough to the tin and then prove again. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and bake for approximately 25 minutes. When cool, cut into 1-cm cubes.
Thyme oil
Blanch*** the thyme on its stems for 4-5 minutes until very tender. Cool in ice water and pull the leaves off the stems. Strain to obtain the leaves, squeeze them through a Superbag**** and keep dry. Pick the parsley leaves and blanch them until tender. Dry as for the thyme. Process the oil and herbs at full speed at 60°C (140°F) in a Thermomix***** for 12 minutes. Cool, then macerate for 24 hours. Strain through a fine cloth, applying pressure for a few hours, and keep in a squeezy bottle.
Serving
Before serving, put the plates in the freezer to get very cold. Pick the wood sorrel and heather into ice water and dry them. Sauté the brioche until crisp and golden and cool on kitchen paper (paper towels). Process the ice cream in a Pacojet, shape into balls of approximately 25mm diameter and place 3 balls of blueberry sorbet and 2 balls of spruce ice cream on each plate. Surround with 5 brioche cubes and cover everything with two and a half tablespoon of granita and a tablespoon of thyme oil. Sprinkle the wood sorrel and heather on top.
*Paco containers are the receptacles used with a Pacojet. A Pacojet is a machine used to make sorbets with a very fine texture, as well as other creations such as frozen powders
**To bloom (gelatin) is to soften gelatin leaves by soaking them for a few minutes in cold water.
***To blanch is to cook food, often vegetables, briefly in boiling water. Usually followed by ‘refreshing’, or plunging straight into cold water to stop the food cooking.
****A Superbag is a very fine mesh bag through which liquids can be strained and clarified.
*****A Thermomix is a food processor that can blend food at different temperatures.
Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine
by René Redzepi
Phaidon Press ($49.95 US, $55 CDN, $69.95 AU, £26)
see: www.phaidon.com
- see videos of Rene Redzepi using Thermomix here >
- visit the website of NOMA cookbook publisher Phaidon Press for more goodies
- catch René Redzepi during his October 2010 world-wide book tour, check book tour dates here >
- watch for more news about the Noma Cookbook, René Redzepi, and Thermomix… coming soon to SuperKitchenMachine.com (those who subscribe by email will be first to know!)
Where I might have bought the book after seeing the video – I know now that I will not. I would not have a clue how to forage for spruce roots….etc. But, he is definitely ON THE LIST of places to go! WOW!
You make a good point Valerie. These master chefs are sharing the recipes they use in their own restaurants, and they’ve not be created for home cooks. Same can be said about this one as was said about Heston’s Fat Duck cookbook when it comes to equipment and sourcing of ingredients but that wouldn’t stop me from reading either book.
As I see it, these books are “mind-openers” that give us ideas for new ways to use our Thermomix, and our kitchen. They make us think about ingredients and methods in new ways, and the visuals are… incredible. In addition to the recipes in Noma, there are details about Redzepi’s reinvention of Nordic cuisine, his obsessive search for fresh new Scandinavian ingredients, and the never-ending experimentation that put his restaurant at the top — all of which are inspiring.
I agree with our Canadian Foodie gal. Where do you start with some of these ingredients? I guess these are not so much home-style recipes as glimpses into the possibilities. I see this as an invitation to loosen up and feel a bit freer to explore. I think the motivation to create is far more important than the expertise for those of us who are new to this kind of thing and happy accidents can really keep you going. Today I made a really simple shredded carrot and apple salad for my daughter and me. I had the idea to use some brine from some pickled beets I had recently canned as a dressing. I threw some sprouts on top for a garnish and the flavour and the striking colour of the brine as it soaked into the carrot and apple on a stark white plate were a success to the eyes and the palate. Hooray for inspiration I say! I felt like a bit of a chef today.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us Bill. It sounds like Thermomix has helped release your culinary creativity :-)
I would definitely like to read the cookbook. It is all about thinking outside the square. Now what kind of roots/shoots could I use for this dish? Eucalyptus perhaps? Maybe I should look up info on Australian indigenous foods and learn just what is edible. I am sure there is something in the rainforest in my back yard I can use. Thinking about food in another way, stretching my mind, and exercising patience. Ummm. Food for thought.
Good on you Bill. Well done.
Woah! I would love to taste that! It sounds weird and amazing. I think this is why chef’s like Jamie Oliver appeal to home cooks like us – they speak our language. Thanks for the very interesting read…
– watch for more to come on this topic! I’ve just received my review copy of NOMA from Phaidon Press and will soon be blogging about it, specifically as it relates to Thermomix fans. When I’m done this same copy of the book will be offered as a prize here on the blog. (Are we having fun yet? I am!)
This recipe looks delicious. I saw the NOMA book today and would love to use it with my Thermomix. Great prize Helene.
Thanks Cookie1 — I just finished adapting a recipe from NOMA for us um… “less professional” types. My cheat on his Carrot Sorbet should be posted in the next 2-3 days.
True, seems to me that the recepies from NOMA do need a bit of adapting – also depending on where you come from and which ingredients you can get!!
If you live anywhere near a forest, you can go and pick your own spruce shoots probably at around this time of year. The whole philosophy of NOMA’s food is ‘back to nature, and back to basics’, capturing the essence of the Scandinavian ingredients. It is nowhere written that all raw materials must come out of a tin or a super market… Guys be creative!
I’m sorry, but get real people! It is incredible to me that Canadian would not to know how to collect spruce shoots! You just go to the spruce tree in the spring and get some new ends of the branches-shoots, they are not roots. It is actually easier than open a can of junk food.