Secret Kitchen menu, 16th & 17th March 2012
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Malt pizza with home-cured bacon & goat’s cheese
Hot-smoked whisky-cured salmon with kale speltcakes
Juniper-cured mackerel with beetroot speltcakes & horseradish
Lightly cured cod with wild garlic pesto & rye toasts
Pork cheeks braised in wheat beer with
speltotto, spinach and baby rootfruits
Danish apple trifle with honey-toasted oats, hazelnuts,
skyr cream, sea buckthorn, heather & blackberry liqueur
Coffee and homemade liqueurs
About tonight’s menu
Deciding on the menu was relatively easy. I’ve just been hugely inspired by the New Nordic Cuisine classes I recently gave in collaboration with Danish cook Mia Kristensen of CPH Good Food. Mia’s food is fresh and seasonal and celebrates all things wild and cured. The New Nordic Cuisine (for it is a Thing) is great for us over here as it uses many of the same ingredients, and provides a refreshing change to our usual Mediterranean obsession.
I have made good use of spelt, having just taken delivery of a 10kg sack from Sharpham Park in Somerset. I have discovered the grains grind to flour very well in my electric spice grinder, and that they make a very nice alternative to oats for speltcakes.
The beautiful fresh fish came from the brand new fishmonger on Highbury Barn, Meek & Wild, which everyone in the ‘hood is very excited about. Now we have almost all bases covered – an excellent butcher (Chris Godfrey, who supplied 10kg of pork cheeks), cheesemonger (La Fromagerie, the goat’s cheese), greengrocer (Mrs Lovell & daughters, who provided the veg and keep me in snacks) and wine merchant (Highbury Vintners, who’ve just started selling a particularly good wheat beer).
I couldn’t resist calling the root vegetables rootfruits, as this is how they’re known in Danish. Many thanks to Mia for all the inspiration, and for bringing over the sea buckthorn berries, heather and skyr – an Icelandic product a bit like fromage frais.
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