Hello Hello Hello.

Im back. With my adventurous adventures from the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen. We are still here and still under lockdown. But luckily finished big cleaning after the 3rd week so we are doing now something much more exciting…. Let me show you.

The whole restaurant became a huge ‘test kitchen’. We ve (interns) been separated into smaller groups each week led by 1-2 different CDPs and this is how we are ‘going to the war’ before every challange. There is Renee’s ‘key word’ every week what we have to focus on – but after that starts the serious brainstorming and non stop race of creative ideas: jumping around pushing each other from one side to the other and twisting and folding and reshaping reborning. Again and again.

• shapes, cuts – was the first week’s task – was working with daikon, squash and beetroot

• folding, layeres – was the second week’s task – dehydrate and folding yoghurt flowers

• textures – is the third week’s task – still working on the perfect yoghurt flowers but building up a ‘pond for fun’ with sugarcrystal ‘water’, seaweed and tonka ‘waves’

It was very difficult and super frustrating at the beggining – you think you have amazing amount of ideas like a neverending rabbit hat and now you got the chance to show off… hehehe. Well yes. But the topics are almost too ‘big’ – too wide range of ideas can fit in there and we – interns got lost having no idea what we can work with (what we can order or what we have in house) so our ideas must stay pretty limited. This is frustrating – especially when you have to give up on an idea because you dont know if you can use walnuts or only beech nuts or u can use thermomix but there is a ‘special machine’ u ve never seen before to separate the nut oil from the solids and if you knew it before… etc etc…. so lets say it looks like we have ‘the freedom of Noma’s pantry’ but we really dont because we are not familiar with it at all. Have no idea how deep is the cave and what we can use or not. Obviously its the perfect playground now for the CDPs as they know all around and have the freedom to order ‘almost everything’ and turning there weird wishes come true.

Like at the second week i had an idea to create a crunchy-layered-amazake rice roll seasoned with Herb Bennett sugar (just like a transformation of a traditional cinnamon snail from the bakeries around) but i ve been told off – not to create any pastries or using koji rice. I could not do it – but in the same week others (CDP) could potentially do something very similar like my plan. So these are the tiny misunderstanding points we got going around in the kitchen – but well. There is always another 10 ideas to replace one – so easy to move forward for the next one without heavy heart. Or when they saying ‘the flavour is not important’ only the technique – but at the end of the week on the big tasting Renee is the one who puts everything in his mouth so YES – THE FLAVOUR IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT – from there your mind can start dancing around with all the potencial possibilities a technique can carry within itself. But still – season it well LOL.

So it is actually awesome. We got time to plan our week ahead – we have a brainstorming day on Monday when the restaurant is actually closed – so we can see what we are facing with, which day what should be done so we wont run out of time. Because we might start the project with an already known technique or recipe – but we really should step out from our comfort zone to try things we never did but always wanted so. Most of the time we just keep doing ‘stuff’ and changing the recipes – a bit in a bit out – so we never sure what we gonna end up at the end of the day. But thats why its a very useful learning proccess. Not even mentioning that you can see what other teams working on and share all the experiences and results so even more knowledge to ‘suck up’! :)

Soooooooo… looking forward to the end of this week with my flower pond dessert idea. :P