Take-away, Part 2 – Homemade take-away

It's getting a bit late and the kids need to get dinner. This situation has called for Thai take-away on other occasions and so we seem destined. However, K is running a bit late and T decides to shop for Thai food - we must be able to make it just as quickly as they are at the local Thai restaurant... or so we think.
We start by roasting a piece of roast beef and in the meantime we prepare vegetables:

Half a stalk of lemongrass
5 sprigs of spring onions
A small handful of ginger cut into small stalks
A red chili - half of it de-seeded
When the roast is ready, cut thin slices and then again cut them in half so the pieces become more easily edible. In the meantime heat up a wok with a little sesame oil. When hot add the vegetables and fry for a little while then add soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, a bit of honey and lime juice. In the end add some green salad (this is inspired by the Thai salads) and some pieces of lemon for decoration and to add more lime juice for those who want that. Serve with rice and sprinkle with chopped coriander.

We discussed some time what to drink. T favors white and suggests a Sauvignon Blanc, while K thinks red is OK, for instance a fruity and fairly chilled red. In the end, T gets his will and we select an Amayna Sauvignon Blanc 2009 from Chile. This works out quite nicely with the food and we rate it as 8/10 with it. The food itself is also nice, but we cannot get more than 7,5/10 Today. Next time, we will not de-seed any of the cilli, will add some roasted sesame seeds, and also a small red onion cut into small pieces and added raw after the dish has been taken off the heat.

A.O.C. Copenhagen

It is fully deserved that AOC got a Michelin star in 2010. AOC is one of the best restaurants in CPH and Christian Aarø's ability to select wine to go with the food made by Ronnie Emborg is exquisite. This makes it an choice to order the Wine menu of which there are two varieties. They are much alike and contain many wines that are in, both, but the wine menu 2 is just a bit more exclusive and thus more expensive. On this occasion we visited the restaurant in the company of 3 generations with each their preferences and taste buds and it seemed that all were impressed and satisfied.
We started with a glass of champagne and ...

Starter one: charcoaled bread with roe of lumpfish and a cheesed cream.
The bread was served on top of actual charcoal and in the dim light we were happy to choose right.

Starter two: foam with cauliflower and danish oyster served in egg shell. Light as clouds with the taste of the sea

The bread: fried brioche with butter

And on to the menu:
Grey mullet, salted and rolled mushroom powder. Raw mushrooms, mussel cream and double cream with oak oil.
Looked like pieces of wood but was soft and moist. Seved with stems of watercress and the leaves of indian cress. Juicy and crisp.

2009 Pouilly-Fumé, Les Duchesses, Domaine Laporte

Next came Summer celery and celery roots, with pure of hazelnuts, green hazelnuts and apple. The soft, bitter celery root with the sour-sweet apple, the richness of the pure and the crispness of pieces of green hazelnuts all went beautiful together.

2009 Meursault, 1. Cru Gouittes d`Or, Domaine Pierre Yves Colin-Morey

The Meursault was so good that we forgot to take a picture!

3rd dish was Cod, poached in butter. Served with summer cabbage and "irritated" egg whites flavoured with tarragon.
Perfectly treated cod. A salty marshmellow and a rich tarragon sauce.

This went down particularly well with the 3rd generation - M - asking T why he could not make dishes like this and of course T could only respond that if he could he wouldn't be working in the IT industry. But nevertheless, a challenge has been issued!

2008 Grüner Veltliner, Berg, Reserve DAC

Weingut Markus Huber, Traisental, Austria

Confit of veal sweetbreads and corn fed chicken
In sauce with lemon verbena, lingonberries and chiffon of fried jerusalem artichokes.
Yet again M voiced his pleasure and with good reason. The combination was delicious and also the sequence in the menu was perfect, i.e. the lighter fish-based dishes and then a more salty and rich dish before the beef.

2006 Pinot Noir Rho, Ampelos Vineyards, Santa Barbara, USA

Piece of beef covered in beetroot, served with parsley and smoked marrow sauce.
We asked for bread to soak up the rest of the sauce, which was delightfully concentrated. 1st generation was sure that it was wine based, but it wasn't...

2007 Fratelli Ravello, Barolo Vigna Giachini. Yet again served perfectly. Decanted and served at the right at (we think) 16 degrees ensured that this relatively young Barolo was superb.

Cheese, Danish cheese 'gnalling' shredded, served with syrup and fried pumpernickel (rugbrød). We came here last year also and had a cheese dish of the Danish Vesterhavsost with truffle oil and toasted pumpernickel and amontilado Sherry and it was so good that we had to order a second helping! This was also good, but not quite up there.

1975 Colheita Port, Burmester, Douro, Portugal

Chamomile tea pudding covered in whole milk gel and granité of sorrel juice


2006 Ürziger Würzgarten, Riesling Auslese
Weingut Jos. Christoffel jr. Mosel, Germany

Black currant in a frozen dome with elderflower and lemon juice.

1997 Château Y’quem, 1. Cru Superieur, 

Sauternes, Bordeaux, France

Coffee with petit four
Marshmallows and chocolate in a rubberlike state














Overall this was an excellent night and our choice to come back here for this years board meeting was proven successful. There are many good restaurants in Copenhagen and this is one of the best in our view. 9,5/10

Margaux

After visiting old friends in their lovely home in Luxembourg we drive to Bordeaux in France. We arrive at the Relais de Margaux a little late after driving through heavy rain we had hoped to have left far behind – in Denmark. Luckily we emerge on the other side and even if the weather cannot measure up to the lovely day in Luxembourg and its 28 degrees centigrade and a long evening sitting with good friends and looking down on the small town of Echternach it is still fair weather.

We order (predictably, since we are now in France) foie gras with fruit bread and a rib-eye steak, bearnaise and chips. To this we have half a bottle of Rochemorin and a bottle of Marquis de Terme 2004.

The fois gras was served in two generous slices with some pickled figs and the fruit bread. Coarse salt was sprinkled on top. Very simple and very nice

The bearnaise was served cold – almost as a herbed butter – the chips were good but a bit soft and finally the meat was cooked perfectly – if we had ordered perfectly.

A little lesson in french... saignant is VERY RARE (but not bleu, which is even more raw)
The waiter misunderstood the medium rare ... and we took her word for it....

For future reference –
Rare: saignant

Medium rare: à point

Medium: cuit
Well done: bien cuit

For dessert we had creme brulée and a three-kind-of-chocolate cake and to drink a sauterne.
The sauterne – much to our surprise – went better with the cake than the pudding...

The dinner at the 'Brasserie du Lac' (the restaurant of the hotel) did the trick for the two tired travelers. We are quite satisfied and going back to both the hotel and the restaurant,  not only one more night, but probably in the future as well.

Pasta alla Norma – the extended edition

One of our favorite 10 minute dishes is Pasta alla Norma. This to a degree that in order to make some variation there is also the extended edition, which T was inspired by something he had seen in a Danish cookbook. Today we opt for the extended edition as we will have no secondo. That fact will not deter us from having some white wine. T has recently bought some wine on a wine auction (an expensive pastime of both K and T) which we decide to taste. The background for this purchase was that T once had a Sancerre on the famous Danish restaurant, Noma and since then he had been trying to track down where to get it. The wine in question was from Alphonse Mellot and called Cuvée Edmondo. The one that T got hold of was not the Cuvée Edmond. It was La Moussière 2006, but it was nevertheless also splendid 9/10.

Back to the extended edition....

Cook/dry slices of 2 melanzane (Eggplant) on a dry, hot pan. Roast some pine nuts (30g). Cut 1½ red pepper fruit into small strips not more than 4cm long. Put hot oil on the pan once all the melanzane has been fried. Add 3-4 cloves of chopped garlic together with the stalks of a small handful of fresh basil. Save the basil leaves for later.
Add the peppers and let them fry for a couple of minutes. Add the melanzane which in the meantime also have been cut into small strips.

Add some chopped tomatoes and let it cook for some minutes. Mix with the drained pasta and top with the pine nuts and the chopped basil leaves. Serve with grated parmesan. Once again we use the 50-50 (50% full grain pasta) with this dish as this is another pasta where it works very well.

As to the extended versus the basic edition: The pepper fruits and the pine nuts are not part of the basic edition. The extended edition can also be further extended with capers and/or chilli and the sauce today might have improved by some additional water from the cooked pasta or maybe just a small glass of white wine. Note that in T's mind the basic edition is served with salted ricotta rather than parmesan, but T has not been able to locate this in Denmark so far. Still trying...

The original Pasta alla Norma is a Sicilian dish made in honor of the opera, Norma by Bellini. Therefore we also select a Sicilian wine (as we normally do for this dish). Today it is a bottle of Don Rudolfo 2007. This is Nero d'Avola based red made by the Danish winemaker Hans Winding-Diers. We drank the last bottle of 2005 a couple of months ago and that was a fond farewell. The 2007 is notably less mature, but still drinkable with a nose of notes of fresh moss.

Today we rate the pasta 7,5 (we have done this better on other occasions), the wine 7,7/10 and together it is a hit as usual 8,2/10)

Pesto

MK's all-time favourite dish is so definitely pasta with Pesto. Today it is reunion with the kids and so they each get to choose what to have for dinner once. Predictably MK chooses Pesto, but before this she beats T in a game of Middle-earth as she manages to sneak Frodo into Mordor where he drops the master ring into Mount Doom – just in the nick of time.

The pesto is routine for T to make due to the umpteenth time MK has selected it. Take a large handful of fresh basil leaves and rinse. Roast 30gr of  pine nuts until light brown. Mix both with salt, grated parmesan cheese, olive oil and two cloves of fresh garlic. Today we use the blender, as T's mortar is just a little bit too small for a larger portion of pesto.



With the pasta pesto we drink some Sancerre La Chantellenie 2009 from Joseph Mellot (7,3/10)

For the secondo we have lamb chops with fennel and a green salad with tomatoes. The lamb chops and fennel are fried on a pan with oil and fresh rosemary and garlic. Simple but absolutely splendid. We open a bottle of René Ratti's Barolo Marcenasco 2000 (9/10) and it is also excellent.















The kids have left the table after pesto but return when they hear our exclamations and in the end we have to give them much of our otherwise excellent secondo (9/10) that together with the wine (9,3/10) was a perfect start to the weekend.