Cheese bubbles in the dockyards: My first Michelin star restaurant

While visiting Copenhagen with my foodie sister and chef brother-in-law, I visited my very first Michelin star restaurant. Since we knew there would be no possibility of dining at Noma on this trip, Sis did some research to find another excellent and accessible Michelin star restaurant. (Copenhagen has 12 Michelin starred restaurant; Noma is the only one with two stars.) Something about being named the best restaurant in the world makes it hard for plebeians, especially American ones, like us, to get a reservation. Go fig?! However, my sister had no problem making (and then pushing back) our lunch reservation at Paustian v. Bo Bech.

With my sister at the helm of the mission, we (three adults, one spunky, garlic-loving 6 year-old) hopped on a regional train, walked into the dock yards, through some fresh tar, and proceeded to get lost and debate (affectionately, of course) about the right way to get there. We had my sister's hand-drawn map from her earlier internet research and the occasional crude sign in the most inexplicable European language I've ever seen (and I studied Danish for 4 months!). We made it there--there being a very white, very Danish looking building, a high-end furniture store with a restaurant--sweaty, dusty, and hungry.

The servers wore hammer pants and bolero jackets and ours reminded me of Régine Chassagne of the Arcade Fire.

First off were some "cheese bubbles," which tasted exactly as their name would have you imagine.
Then, shrimp with chive blossoms:

And frozen grapefruit:

A beautiful slice of "ox heart" tomato with a vanilla-infused oil.

Throughout the meal we were offered three different kinds of bread: sourdough, licorice-glazed bun, and Swedish knäckebröd (crispbread), which tastes like an oyster cracker, communion wafer, and also nothing.

Between the four of us we ate every course offered at lunch that day. There was the smoked eel with spinach:
White asparagus slathered in...some kind of cream sauce, and served on a slate. Probably the most appetizing way to serve something incredibly unappetizing and dull.

And a braised leek atop lamp:


For dessert, vanilla ice cream with bitter wispy chocolate wafer and caramels:


Obviously my palette is not as sophisticated as the Michelin guide writers, but I enjoyed the first half of the meal far more than the last. The amuse-bouche were unique and tasty, the tomato was the stuff my (non-chocolate) dreams are made of, and the smoked eel might have made me an eel convert.

I think the restaurant closed the week after we visited, but will be reopening in a more central location, which seems like a wise idea. Thank you to my sister and brother for this culinary first! "Tak for Mad!"

Farmers' Market Glory

This week's buys: asparagus (the most delicate stalks yet this season), kale, 2 quarts of strawberries, a boule of chocolate cherry bread, and small seedlings of lemon thyme, basil, and Italian parsley. The seedlings have already been potted and the bread nibbled. This bread would make to-die-for bread pudding, along the lines of one of my mom's favorites--croissant bread pudding with chocolate chips and dried cranberries--but letting this loaf get stale seems like a travesty. Thinking about strawberry soup or strawberry pie...the eternal struggle between the new recipe and the tried and true.

I might have gone a little overboard, but it's better than buying shoes I don't need, right? This fresh local fare will nourish my body and spirit. (The shoes only work on the spiritual level.) I frequently suffer from buyer's guilt (variation on buyer's remorse), but never when it comes to my farmers' market purchases!

Looking for something new to do with Asparagus?

I was. So was Mark Bittman. Like two peas in a pod, we are, but he's the more inventive and famous pea.

I made a half-recipe of Bittman's Asparagus Pesto and ate it on pasta (ridges a-must!) with peas. It was tasty enough to be eaten three days in a row: dinner, lunch, lunch again.

Plus, using my Cuisinart is fun! Isn't the pesto a beautiful color?

The Farmers' Market is open!

Wooohoo! My neighborhood farmers' market opened last weekend.

Last week I bought rhubarb (my hands-down absolute favorite VEGETABLE masquerading as a fruit), asparagus, and beautiful Russian kale.

Asparagus is very spring-y and delicious roasted and grilled, but I was looking for a new platform and I found it in the Simply in Season cookbook: asparagus soup, which is not very photogenic, so I'll spare you. Unfortunately I made what seemed like minor revisions to the recipe, but they had measurable results.
1) I cooked the veggies (celery, potato, onion) in too much water and then included all this water when pureeing. The soup ended up much too thin.
2) Used too much celery, which--I read somewhere recently--has a tendency to make dishes bitter.
3) Substituted yogurt for dry milk. The recipe called for yogurt in the bowl when serving, but I blended it into the soup in place of dry milk. This last misstep was probably trivial, but since I’m splitting hairs…

My beloved rhubarb found its way into muffins, also a recipe from Simply in Season. These moist muffins contain no butter, some oil and a good bit of yogurt so it doesn't take much convincing to believe they are healthy. I will make them again, and photograph next time!

I received this beautiful cupcake Teacher Appreciation day on Monday.
As I took my first bite, the pleasure-seeking area of my brain was confused because rather than butter and chocolate and...well...flavor, I only vaguely tasted anything; maybe it was oil and corn syrup. No human made this cupcake from anything resembling real food. I suspect a chain grocery store was behind this unfortunate mislabeling of the food "cupcake." Without much of a second thought, I exchanged the cupcake for a muffin, my second of the day. This speaks very highly of the muffin, because anyone who knows me knows that I will eat just about anything that someone else gives me especially when I'm at work and especially when it's baked goods. Disclaimer: I am by no means ungrateful for the cupcake!

When I stayed home sick with a cold the next day, I ate at least three muffins. I can’t say they healed me, but they did prevent me from the fate of a frozen burrito.

This week's farmers' market finds were more rhubarb and asparagus and strawberries. I just pulled a rhubarb-strawberry pie (my first solo pie ever!) out of the oven! Stay tuned!

Baaaaa! It's lamb season.

First grilling of the season!

These lamb loin chops came from the incredible little emporium of local grub, Maple Avenue Market in Vienna, VA. Its owners, Chris and Sara are also among the forces behind On the Gourmet, which, by the way, outfitted my first date with my boyfriend. He's got good taste (paté, goat cheese and flatbread crackers) and entrepreneurial foodie friends.

He was also responsible for preparing these chops with a combination of bbq sauce, balsamic vinegar and pepper and grilling them to perfection.

I've been left wanting more lamb! BAAAAA!