The Year of Living Danishly (22 page)

‘I'd say I'm a nine out of ten,' he responds. ‘I love my work – I'd do it even if I wasn't being paid – I have a lovely flat, I bike everywhere, and my only problem in life right now is deciding between getting a Steinway grand piano and a Blüthner. I mean seriously, these are First World problems.' So is there anything that would make him happier? Other than choosing the perfect piano to fit in his flat? ‘Having a view of the sea,' he says straight away. ‘That would bring me up to a ten.'

I decide not to mention the fact that I live by the sea and just remind myself of the things I have to be thankful for.

Reuniting with Lego Man, high on retail therapy, he announces that he has procured us two new lamps. I wince, already imagining bank manager Allan with two ‘l's' admonitions at such reckless spending. On the plus side, my husband says that he also has several recommendations for where to go for lunch.

‘It was weird,' he says, ‘everyone I spoke to presumed I was a tourist, then when I told them I lived in Jutland, they did this funny thing with their heads,' he demonstrates a now-familiar head-on-one-side-in-sympathy pose. ‘After that, they'd say, “I'm sorry”. Maybe they didn't understand my accent or something…' I haven't the heart to tell him that I suspect they understood perfectly and that this is the stock response when I tell people that a) I wasn't born Danish or b) that I now live in Jutland. Instead of ripping off this particular Band-Aid, I focus on planning out our remaining mealtimes. My appetite is now back with a vengeance and I plan on making the most of the choice and quality the capital has to offer. We find Japanese, Mexican, Lebanese, restaurants with
stars
, cafés that serve
vegetables
, and menus without pictures. For someone who has been
smörgås-bored
by Jutland's food offerings (aside from the pastries) for nine months now, this feels like heaven.

‘We're not in Sticksville now…' I tell Lego Man as I inhale a truffle-dust-and-powdered-mushroom dish in one of the city's smarter canal-side restaurants.

‘Not a curried pork ball in sight,' agrees Lego Man as he dabs off the remnants of a peppered loin of venison from around his mouth.

Copenhagen has been having a culinary renaissance in recent years and a total of fifteen Michelin stars were awarded to thirteen restaurants in the city in 2013 – more than any other Scandinavian city. Tellingly, no restaurants outside of Copenhagen gleaned a single star and Jutland is still, for the most part, a culinary wasteland. I want to find out more about why this is and whether Copenhagen's great foodie success story has had an impact on national pride – and happiness levels – but I need some help. Enter Bo Basten, chef at Meyers Madhus and the friend-of-a-shiny-
new
-friend back in Sticksville who I promised to look up and say ‘
hej
' to. Before joining Claus Meyer of Noma fame at his latest emporium, Bo worked in a double Michelin-starred restaurant in Copenhagen and as a chef for the Danish royal family. In short, the man knows his stuff. Plus he looks like a cross between a Scandi hipster and Jesus. So when Lego Man spots another design shop he wants to bankrupt us in, I take the time to talk food with Bo.

‘So,' I ask him after the preliminaries (aka me trying very hard not to tell him he looks like Jesus), ‘has Copenhagen always been pretty good for foodies?'

He laughs. ‘Ha! The answer is no. I grew up in the 70s and 80s on canned food and frozen veg. The only flavour enhancers most people knew about were fat, salt and sugar. If Danish food had been a guitarist, it would only have known three chords.'

‘A bit like Status Quo?'

‘Sure. We ate
smørrebrød
and junk food.'

From what I've observed, a lot of Danes still eat this way. Even the smallest village here seems to have a pizzeria or a
pølser
van serving the Danish version of the hot dog – bright red wieners baked in their very own bready prophylactic. Every outlet also attempts to sell me the abomination that is salted liquorice, a substance so alarming that it makes my mouth feel as though someone's attacking it with poisoned sandpaper.

‘And what's with the whipped cream from a can?' I demand. ‘It's on everything! I mean, who eats whipped cream these days? Are we at a
Chippendales
show from the 1980s?' I'm on a roll now. ‘Then there are all the burger joints!' I go on, recounting how I've read that McDonald's profits are up 10 per cent year on year in Denmark. Any remaining traditional eateries, I rant, just serve open sandwiches or meatballs.

‘But in the last ten years things have changed a lot,' Bo protests, ‘at least, in the capital.'

Lucky old Copenhageners
, I think. Again.

Bo goes on: ‘Danes used to look to French and Italian cuisine, but now they can do it their own way. These days, more and more farmers and producers are trying to make unique produce with a clear Nordic identity.'

It all started in 2004 when chefs Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer turned a former warehouse in Christianshavn into a restaurant and named it after a combination of the Danish words ‘
nordisk
' (Nordic) and ‘
mad
' (food). Noma was born and the pair vowed to eschew the traditional olive oil-and-foie gras Mediterranean ingredients being used in top restaurants at the time in favour of homegrown Danish produce. The same year, Meyer brought together fellow chefs to develop a set of principles to help Nordic food move forward. Just as Dogme 95 put the emphasis on stripping things back to basics in film, the Nordic Cuisine Symposium, as they called themselves, vowed to focus on the raw materials of cooking by using local, often foraged, seasonal produce. After an eighteen-hour-long workshop, the chefs formulated the New Nordic Kitchen Manifesto. Its outline: to express ‘purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics' by prioritising ‘ingredients and produce whose characteristics are particularly excellent in our climates' and helping to ‘promote Nordic products and producers'.

The manifesto was taken up by lots of chefs but it's Noma that's been key to New Nordic Cuisine, says Bo. ‘A lot of people laughed at Noma to begin with. They'd be like, “How can you charge people for serving them live ants?” [another favourite was sea urchin toast] But it's really opened people's eyes.' Noma was awarded first one, then two stars in the
Michelin Guide
, and has been named the World's Best Restaurant four times since 2010. The restaurant's fame hasn't automatically meant fortune and Noma still barely breaks even, employing 68 staff for just 45 covers. Because it's Denmark, even the lowliest of waiting staff gets paid a decent wage and there's a 25 per cent value added tax (known as ‘
moms
' in Danish) on everything. Noma is a labour of love, but Rene Redzepi recently told the newspaper
Politiken
that he felt New Nordic Cuisine had ‘done its duty' – having now filtered down to more wallet-friendly eateries and even affected the capital's grocery stores.

‘Supermarkets in Copenhagen started stocking better selections because people were hearing about these different ingredients,' says Bo. ‘Noma chefs also combined their experience at the restaurant with their own heritage so that when they left to work somewhere else, they spread and developed the New Nordic Cuisine ethos.'

I want to get a better understanding of what this is so I ask him how he'd begin to educate someone who, just for example's sake, only knew how to boil pasta until she was in her mid-twenties.

‘For me,' says Bo, ‘it's about the
easiest
way to the
most
pleasure. If you have a carrot that's full of flavour and fresh and juicy, eat it raw. Don't roast it or puree it. Eating in season is also key. Think about what's outside your window and what you can grow yourself, and get to know what local produce you can get at different times of year.'

I tell him that whenever I buy Danish fruit and vegetables, they go off more quickly than I'm used to.

‘That's because we haven't stuffed them with chemicals – that's a good thing!' Bo chastises me. ‘In Denmark, we prefer our fruit and veg fresh.'

That's me told. I ask Bo whether he's heard about the reports claiming that Danes are the happiest nation on earth and am surprised to learn that he hasn't. ‘But that makes sense. I'd say I'm an eight out of ten. Eating makes me happy.' Any foodstuff in particular? I ask.

‘I can't possibly narrow it down to one,' he replies in horror, ‘it would be like picking a favourite child! I just love tasting food.'

So what would make him a ten?

‘Well, I'd like a new car,' he says, before backtracking, ‘but I have everything else I could want already. And really, I'm happier with healthy children and a great wife than I would be with a new car.' I tell him this is lovely. I only hope that Lego Man would say the same thing, though I suspect that his response might be slightly more along the lines of
‘what kind of car are we talking?'

We say goodbye and he leaves me with a parting rally call: ‘Remember – next time you go shopping it's all about seasonality. Fresh is best!'

To keep Denmark's foodie scene ‘fresh', the team behind Noma and the New Nordic Kitchen Manifesto set up the Nordic Food Lab in 2008, a not-for-profit ideas laboratory to research new techniques and share findings between food academics. Working out of a houseboat moored opposite Noma in Copenhagen's harbour, the lab team experiment with flavours and explore their edible surroundings – with an emphasis on foraging. I decide to make Ben Reade, head of culinary research and development on board the houseboat HQ, my next port of call.

Ben, fresh from a field trip to Uganda, tells me he's been investigating edible insects.

‘I tried some great crickets out there and learned how the locals cook them,' he says. ‘It's all about getting inspiration for what we can do at home and what insects we can raise specifically to eat – like crickets, which are easy to rear. People shouldn't rule out eating insects just because we don't in our culture at the moment. Some of them, especially wild ones, are really delicious.'

‘Most of what we're using are ingredients we've always had in Scandinavia, where there are very specific, but diverse climatic conditions,' says Ben. ‘Danish food is very seasonal. It's not just about root vegetables in autumn, meat dishes in winter, fish in spring, shrimps in summer etc. – we're talking
micro seasons
– week to week.' Ben lists cabbage, kale, apples, potatoes, berries, rye and other root vegetables as being especially good in Denmark. ‘We don't get them for long but when we do, they're fabulous. The first time you have something in a season – like asparagus tips or hare or elderflower – it's a really special moment and something that you absolutely look forward to.'

The seasonal,
traditional
Nordic diet has been proven to be as healthy as the renowned Mediterranean diet and researchers at Sweden's Lund University found that a diet rich in fish, berries, wholegrain rye bread and good oils (like the Danish-favoured rapeseed oil), can lower levels of harmful cholesterol and protect against diabetes. The fatty acids found in oily fish such as Denmark's ubiquitous herring have long been proven to help counter depression and new studies from Aarhus University also show that the traditional Nordic diet can help lower blood pressure – something that's bound to make Danes happier.

‘I think the New Nordic movement really helped people remember all the great, healthy, fresh foods we already have here that are really well-suited to the northern climates,' says Ben. ‘The lesson we can take from this should be about opening your eyes to your surroundings, to the nature around you. Noma has been about a change in perception and learning to be more curious about your food – and now more and more restaurants have caught on and are doing it brilliantly.'

Which is great for everyone living in Copenhagen. But the changes haven't quite hit Jutland yet. It seems to me that there are three distinct styles of Danish cuisine on offer: ‘New Nordic' (interesting, experimental, award-winning Noma et al), ‘Old Nordic' (
pølsers
, pizzas and whipped cream-o-rama) and ‘Traditional Nordic' (healthy, seasonal, berry-heavy, and the one all the scientists get excited about). It's my guess that ‘Old Nordic' cuisine is still eaten by 99 per cent of the country.

As I make my way back to our hotel to pack up the car for home, I arrange to speak to the woman dubbed ‘The Danish Delia' for an insight into what
real
people are eating on a daily basis. Trine Hahnemann is a celebrity chef who's been fronting the Danish home-cooking movement for years. I tell her I'm interested in what the average Dane is eating in, say, Jutland, for instance.

‘Jutland? Jutland where?' is her response, so I tell her where I live in Sticksville-on-Sea. ‘I know the area,' she says, rather ominously. ‘I'd say that exactly where you're living is probably the most deprived area, food-wise, in the whole country.'

Break it to me gently, Trine…

‘On the plus side, you have some of the best organic growers and producers of chicken and eggs and beers nearby in Jutland. But you probably don't see any of the produce locally where you live. It all tends to be sold to the bigger cities, like Aarhus. The staple diet where you are is probably less “New Nordic” and more pork and potatoes.'

I tell her she's bang on. ‘What is it with potatoes? It's like Danes are spud-obsessed!'

‘That's really a Jutland thing,' she says. ‘I don't know what Jutlanders think is going to happen if they don't have potatoes every day. Sometimes they double up with some rice or rye on the side as well for a double carb hit.'

Interesting. Carbs have been proven to raise levels of serotonin, the chemical in the brain that elevates mood, according to research from MIT.
Maybe Danes are essentially popping happy pills with every potato fix
, I think, as Trine goes on: