[Synth Music Playing]
Floating in Copenhagen's harbor, just steps away from the doors of Noma,
is The Nordic Food Lab.
Part research station, part test kitchen,
the converted house-boat is a dedicated workspace
for the Lab's experiments with local ingredients from the Nordic region.
On board the Nordic Food Lab, Director Michael Bom Frøst and researcher Josh Evans,
show us of some of their latest work.
[Michael Bom Frøst speaking] The Nordic Food Lab is a self-governing institution founded in 2008 by....
.... René Redzepi, the head chef of Noma, and Claus Meyer, a Gastronomical Entrepreneur.
And our purpose is to explore the raw materials of the Nordic region
and the culinary traditions and the continent techniques and
iterate on them and disseminate them.
The results of this journey of discovery to the world, to chefs,
to home cooks, to industry,
so that they can be inspired and take up the ideas and
develop them further into new Nordic products.
[Josh Evans speaking] And these are some of the products that we've been working on over the past few years.
The Lab was founded in 2009.
And since then, we've been exploring,
trying to explore as widely as possible all the different edible products in our region.
And we use edible in a very broad sense, because often we'll come across something
that either isn't immediately edible or it doesn't have a tradition of being eaten,
but it still tastes very good or it has the potential to taste very good.
And that's our approach.
As we say, what is delicious out there? Or what seems like it could be delicious?
And how can we use that as a starting point and then try and end up at a place where
it becomes a food that is edible and celebrated.
Seaweed was one of the first projects The Lab was was interested in, um....
Because there's a huge diversity of seaweeds all over the world
and that's equally true in the North Atlantic and Baltic Seas.
And seaweeds are interesting for many reasons.
They have an abundance of umami taste
in many different forms.
They can have a variety of different flavors, as well.
And they also have very different hydrocolloid or tension active properties.
Many of the hydrocolloids that we use are actually refined from seaweeds.
Like agar and Irish moss and a lot of these other things.
And that's because of their evolutionary history.
They needed a way to maintain their structure in constantly aqueous environment,
and also to be able to manage salt concentrations and all these sorts of things.
We are primarily interested in this first for umami taste.
And these are two examples of seaweeds that we became very, very involved with.
The first is a red algae called "dulse."
The Danish name is [....]
[chuckles]
It's a very hard word to say.
And it's beautiful. It's its first thing you notice that it's just very beautiful.
It's this beautiful red purple color and it has all sorts of different forms.
This is when it's quite young.
And it has these small sort of fingers coming off of it.
And as it grows it will they will become much larger
and you'll get these these larger pieces like this, um....
And some of it we actually aged for.... Well, this has been aging for two years.
And when you age it,
the proteins start to break down,
you get free amino acids which is what makes it taste umami,
and you get the sweetness because some of the amino acids taste sweet.
And you all of the flavors start to develop and complexify.
and it allows you to....
It sort of unlocks this whole new world,
just by letting it sit.
[Michael Bom Frøst] It's not traditionally being used in the Nordic region,
but it has a lot of potential as a flavor enhancer.
As an element in creating a Nordic dashi,
if you want to say it that way.
[Josh Evans] And we've used it in a variety of different foods already.
In very common foods like bread and cheese and making soup stocks with it
and using it to marinate — marinating meats,
and it has all these different applications. And, um....
[Michael Bom Frøst] And ice cream. [Josh Evans] Ice cream is, like, the best.
[Josh Evans] Ice cream from this is fantastic because so often in — especially in Western cuisine,
umami tastes is almost always in a savory context.
In meats and in hard cheeses and all of these things,
there's very little in the way of umami paired with sweetness,
but that's a very interesting way to try and further understand what the umami taste really is.
Because if it's always paired with saltiness,
you are only ever really going to experience it as, like, a salty thing.
Because it's a little harder to pinpoint if you didn't sort of....
....grow up with this understanding of what it is.
And so by making an ice cream with it,
we aren't just making something that is delicious,
because everyone likes ice cream, um....
But we're also making a way to experience....
Try and identify what umami taste is.
This is especially interesting for chefs....
To try and gain a more complex and more thorough understanding of umami taste
by divorcing it from the saltiness that's so familiar as a pairing,
and having it be in a sweet context.
It's also a great way to get people to try it
who would otherwise thinks seaweeds are gross or weird.
And this is something that we come up against again and again, where....
Something like seaweed, people have this very....
A lot of people in cultures where there isn't a tradition of using seaweeds,
will experience it as not a food because they only ever experience it as
something that's rotting on the beach that has flies on it.
Yes, that stinks and is just....
....not that good!
But that's like saying, "oh, I don't like apples,"
if you go through an apple orchard and all you ever look at is the rotting apples on the ground,
and you never look up into the apples that are beautiful on the tree.
And so, we try and showcase how fantastic things like seaweeds and wild plants and insects can be
in their best form.
This is another seaweed that we're really interested in.
It's much more robust than the [...], which is very — can be very delicate.
This is a salt made from this — which is kelp....
....in the Laminariaceae genus. Sugar kelp. Kombu — yeah.
And this one is.... This one is indigenous to the North Atlantic,
and grows elsewhere as well. This one is invasive. This one is from Pacific.
And has made its way here from tankers, shipping....
And so the best thing we can do is to eat it, basically....
And so we've worked a lot with this as well.
And one of the best things that we've.... One of the most versatile applications we found for it
is to make us salt out of it by making a very simple tea — making a dashi out of it. Um....
And then dehydrating the tea. And the salts crystallize,
and it's very strong, so you only need a little bit.
And we can use this just like using salt, uh....
Instead of using a simple sodium chloride, you can use this,
which in fact is more potassium chloride than sodium chloride.
So, for people who are afraid of consuming too much salt in their diets,
uh....
....this is a different, is different at a chemical level....
and will function differently in your body.
We actually have some [...] as well. That's what it looks like when it's fresh.
It's quite beautiful.
[Michael Bom Frøst] And some of the investigations we've done have been actually published in a scientific journal about
what when we try to do this.....
....try to compare Nordic seaweeds with the Japanese seaweeds,
in terms of how much umami taste they bring about,
and how many umami compounds are in them.
So, you can say that some of them are quite comparable
and they give, uh....
So, you could easily take our local seaweed
and do the same with them as you would do with the imported.
And, so we have a different seaweed.
We don't actually have any of the original seaweed right now,
but it's called Gracilaria.
And Gracilaria is the seaweed that agar is refined from. Um....
And so, Justine actually....
has been exploring making our own agar,
which turns out is very possible, um....
....to make an agar that is just as strong and just as colorless
as an agar that you would get that was industrially refined.
This is agar or this is Gracilaria after it's been bleached in the sun, so....
Usually it's a deep purple color and it's very sort of stringy. It looks like hair almost.
Um....
But after treating it.... (and you can treat it with lye water,
or you can treat it just in plain water and it will take longer)
but you can bleach it — leave it out in the sun, it will turn white like this.
And once you do that, you cook it....
and then you make a gel and then you dehydrate the gel....
Simplifying steps, of course, but that's the basic idea....
And then you get something like this,
which is a very thin sheet of agar,
and you can use this just as you would use agar.
Of course, it's a lot easier to just call up your supplier and buy agar.
But that's not....
We're not always concerned with what's easiest. We're concerned with what's most delicious.
And with what's most....
What says the most about the area that we are.
If we can make our own agar from seaweeds that are in our waters, why aren't we doing that?
Why aren't we trying to make different types of agar out of different seaweeds?
Because many seaweeds share some of their properties.
Ultimately our pursuit for deliciousness
and our pursuit for diverse applications in the kitchen
leads us to diversity in general. Biodiversity.
More sustainable food systems.
A more a more complex way of thinking about how we make our food and why.
The Food Lab and other restaurants and other chefs have really pioneered in this region,
looking at what used to be thought of as weeds, but now....
we talk about them as wild plants.
And what used to.... what....
Currently, what's talked about as seaweed, but maybe someday we can talk about it as sea vegetables. Um....
That's where this connection with language is actually very crucial.
And it really informs how we are able to think about and how we're able to interact with them,
not just talking about them, but how we actually put things on a plate.
If something is thought of as a vegetable or a fruit,
you eat that differently than if it's....
than if you think about it as a weed,
or as, like, something that is somehow not desired you know?
And that's another part of our work.
So, fermentation is one of our largest pursuits in The Lab. Um....
Because it's so diverse.
There's so many different types of fermentation,
so many different techniques that we can use to explore new types of flavor.
And also there are different fermentation traditions all over the world.
So, there's a huge diversity of existing traditions
that can be used and reinterpreted in different contexts.
So, it's a constant source of inspiration for us.
This is a deer leg.
Uh.... It started out quite larger than this.
And this is about a year and a half old now.
It started out as a as a way to try and make something akin to a prosciutto or cured....
....leg of ham.
But using venison.
There's also a similar tradition of this in Norway called a [...],
that uses sheep's leg, um.....
And so, the more.... Ben was really, really, really behind this one....
And the more he explored this, the more he saw these connections between
preserving meat and mummification, actually.
And traditions of preserving human flesh for burial.
And so that sort of started getting all these creative juices flowing.
And he started combining all these ideas and, uh....
And this is an example of many different processes layered on top of each other.
So, you started out with a venison leg.
Rubbed it with salt to start the curing process and to draw moisture out.
Then we rubbed it with whey, which has a lot of lactic acid bacteria in it.
So, we can start acidifying it
to bring down the pH and to inoculate it with bacteria that we want to be drawing on this.
Then it was sprayed with different resins which have a lot of antimicrobial properties,
so we can try and control the microbial culture.
And over time, its loses moisture and the flesh that's to break down,
similar to the seaweed where the proteins are breaking down, you have....
all the proteins breaking down in this, into amino acids,
which is why, again — the source of umami taste.
And the more we did this, the more.... The less it became like a prosciutto,
and the more it became something like a Katsuobushi.
So, this one we did the same technique.
Rubbed it with honey and covered it with beeswax and then....
You can see that there's a very noticeable difference in size.
And these were started at the same time.
And so this one is losing moister much more slowly.
But you're still getting all of the complexity flavor as the fermentation continues.
So, it's this layering of techniques and trying almost, uh....
It's sort of a bricolage really, where you're pulling different ideas from different places,
different time periods, different people, different environments,
and trying to layer them into something that is composed of all of those things
but is also something more than.... Something different entirely.
So, is this a Norwegian product? Is it an Italian product?
Is it a Danish product? That question sort of doesn't....
It's irrelevant. It's not an interesting question anymore.
What's interesting is — does it taste good? And why does it taste good?
And what are all of the sources of inspiration that we've used to make something like this?
And I think that goes back to the idea of trying to find a new way to interact with globalization.
This wouldn't be possible in a world that wasn't so connected.
Because we have access to all this information and knowledge
that we can gather and we can share,
that's how we can make more delicious, more diverse foods.