[Techno Music Playing]
[Narrator] Italian-born chef Christian Puglisi
of Restaurant Relae in Copenhagen has a Michelin star and a place on the
World's 50 Best Restaurants List.
Both Chef Puglisi and his restaurant partner, Kim Rosen, formerly worked at Noma.
And Chef Puglisi also worked at El Bulli.
Despite this illustrious background, Chef Puglisi strives to create accessible dishes
with a focus on vegetables, such as this spring salad with egg foam and gel.
[Chef Puglisi] So, I'm preparing a simple dish for you here.
This is one of our first vegetarian courses we have on the menu.
We have two different menus and one is all based on vegetables
and this is the start of that menu at the moment.
And it's composed of the ideas of a salad, it's....
spring and summer is close, and.....
we do a salad with different types of herbs and we combine it with an egg.
....In almost a quite classic way, but we do it in a bit of a different way.
First things first, we have these local Danish radishes,
that we have previously, uh.... previously cut up.
And smaller bits, so they are easy to grab onto with a spoon,
Something like this.... I like to keep on the roots and everything so you can really
experience the different textures of it.
Right, a bit of olive oil, a little bit of vinegar....
And salt.
The vinegar I use is a pear vinegar, which is....
It's not sweet, but it's fruity, which I think works very, very well with many things in our kitchen.
So, it's not only sharper, but it has a more round bit of flavor....
Here I add the radishes.
Just basically spread out in a way where you can eat them one by one.....
When you eat with your spoon....
So, building up around these, I'm gonna start putting these on. These are Nasturtium leaves.
This your plants also make very beautiful flowers that are also tasty,
and also the the fruit is also usable as a caper — we use the salt and and pickle those.
I had a good amount of these to have like a very peppery cress flavor but,
still in — an almost sweet finish to it, so it's it's really pleasant to eat.
But with the egg toning down all those spicy flavors.
You really need a lot of punch behind the herbs you would eat for something like this,
So.... Here we go....
Here we go.....
This is a watercress which is wild, and it's....
A bit more rustic flavor than the other one. A bit more spicy....
More peppery. And I really like the stems, because they're also juicy.
Around, put that around.
This is actually from Oca. We call it an Oxalis.....
And it's because of the Oxalis family.
Basically it is something that looks like Waturu
which has become very popular in our country and Scandinavia in general.
But this is the Oca. Actually, it's a plant....
....that I actually saw that when I was in New York, that it was one of the first....
things that the indigenous Indians were eating.
The root. But this is the founder plant, and it has an acidity.
And if you've tried Oca, you know that it's a root....
that is very unusually acidic, and it's fresh sweet. It's a very strange thing.
We haven't really figured out how to use the root in a way we we enjoy,
but the leaves are very nice and the stems are very juicy and very acidic.
So, this gives like an acidic freshness to the dish.
Also, of course when you eat this, you mix it up with the egg
but every type of vegetable and herb give you a different impression, so....
As you eat it, there's a complexity to it because it changes as you as you eat through it.
This is a [....] which is another acidic herb.
These are a bit bigger, just gonna add something like two of them.
This is a sorrel called the French sorrel.
That is not because it's from France but it's just the type — that is called that way.
Just add a few of these around....
Like that.....
Also crisp and acidic.
Now....
These are radish tops or radish shoots, so....
The the radish starts with this and then the bulb starts growing underneath.
And these give a bit more of a peppery — peppery note.
Not as acidic as the others.
We're gonna put those a bit everywhere.
This is as a....
We don't do many of these dishes with a lot of components, a lot of herbs, or vegetables, or....
So, we normally keep it very low. But this is a....
If you if you want to celebrate spring, and the time where we are in now....
It's a real celebration of us going through a winter where we didn't have anything for a very long time.
So, it's good for us to be able to enjoy a bit more of a colorful plate, with a more a bigger variation of things.
And this is a very small crest shoots, and these are these are peppery indeed.
Just going to add those like small bunches around, where they add a little bit of spice in between....
Then is time to add the egg.
And the egg — the idea of this is essentially, really, so far, as a very, very.....
traditional — almost a salad — with good produce,
and we wanted to say, "Okay, can we do like a poached egg in a salad?"
"....But change it somehow to give it a different feeling."
And we still want the egg to be, like, the binding element or the sauce of the dish,
but instead of having a runny egg yolk and a cooked egg or having it warm,
what we've done is — we've tried to separate the egg and egg yolk and egg white.
The egg yolk we salt — completely cover them in salt and keep them for about 24 hours,
and then we dry them at something like 45/50 degrees for four or five hours....
So they come out rubbery. You can see, you can mold it.
Like that.....
We used to do these much drier,
so that we could grate it as a condiment or something,
or as a seasoning for it.
And this has an incredible deftness of flavor, and it's umami and it has fattiness to it,
but it's really rich. It really gives flavor.
When we've molded to this point, then we start pushing it through a pasta sheeter.
And just basically spreading it out, until it gets a lot thinner and it comes out like this.
So, this is a very clear flavor of egg yolk,
but without that coating, fattiness that it all often brings.
The egg white, on the other hand, we've cooked at 62 degrees....
And we put it in bags, and then we cook it in a water bath — a temperature controlled water bath.
62 degrees for about 45 minutes.
Basically just to have a cook base and to make a savory meringue, if you like.
Because once it's cooked, it's still liquid, it's not set completely.
We can just add it to the siphon here.
And by cooking it, it comes out more stable,
while as you could, in theory, just add the egg white to the siphon and charge it,
but it will fall apart very fast.
Cooking it makes it much more workable, and keeps creamy for a longer time on the plate.
You just close it carefully.
It needs a bit of shaking....
So, it comes out already nice and foamy.
We also add a little bit of salt to this, before we cook it,
just to have it seasoned properly.
I'm just gonna add the egg white as a base here....
And on top of the egg white, I'm just gonna add its egg yolk, so to say.
Just add it here.
And then by now, we can just add a little bit of seasoning to the herbs.
We also add a little bit of vinegar to the egg yolk,
so that it softens it slightly.
So, it's gonna have just to stay with this vinegar for just about 30 seconds or so.
Just before the guests are receiving it.
So, see, it comes out even more transparent than it was before.
And it becomes very soft to just put your spoon through and mix with the rest.
So, basically what you have here, is a pretty simple salad,
where you just will get through this fluffy egg
with the nicely — not salty, but very savory — egg yolk on top,
as a condiment for all the herbs and the vegetables around it.
And what I really like it is that you really get a clear egg flavor,
that goes with the radishes and the peppery notes and the acidity,
but it doesn't coat your mouth and doesn't get heavy as an egg dish very often is....
So, this way, it comes out a bit more elegant, and a bit more suited for a starter and a light dish.