Omnivore NY: Mads Refslund’s Master Class

Denise de Castro

14 years ago

Mads Refslund is a chef from Copenhagen. He certainly has a different style of cooking – using mostly vegetables local to Denmark. He quickly whipped up 6 dishes in 30 minutes. Chef Refslund says the Danish way of cooking involves 12-courses, so looks like we’ve only got a teaser during our session.

Here’s a photologue of the session.

Pickled Raw Green Almonds

Pickled Mirabella (Prunes)

Nasturtium

Pickled almonds topped with mackerel, pickled mirabella, roasted almond oil, and ground fennel

This is a cattail. It grows in the swamps of Denmark.
Often called the “supermarket of the swamp,” you can eat the stalk and its flowers.
The leek stalk tastes like cucumber.

To cook cattails, just glaze with butter and sauté. Do not roast cattails because they cannot take much heat.

Green strawberries from Denmark

Cattails with roasted cucumbers, white garlic, green strawberry juice, lemon juice, and nasturtium leaf

The cucumbers are grilled and seasoned with salt and oil.
The seasonal white garlic is grilled for about 1 minute.

A black beet cooked in the oven for 4 hours under low heat. Chef Refslund then burns the outside with a blow torch.
The beets taste earthy and light.

Serve topped with lardo (speck from Denmark) – it melts over the beets. Top with pine leaves. Drizzle with beet juice.

Chef Mads Refslund ready to prepare fresh langosteens, which were half-arm length.
Just season the langosteens with olive oil and salt.
Take a chestnut leaf and wrap the langosteen and grill for 2 to 3 minutes.
Warning: do not eat the chestnut leaf raw – it tastes horrible.

Grilled langosteens wrapped in chestnut leaves topped with white asparagus, butter, and salt from dashi
Ramps seasoned with lemon, vinegar, hazelnut oil, and salt were also added to the dish.
The dashi in this dish was made with grilled mackerel. Just boil in water, strain and reduce to nothing. Then it becomes salt.
Even the emcee said “This is freakin’ good.”

Chef Refslund prepares lambs breast by wrapping it in beach cabbage leaves. He piles sand on top of it and build a fire on top, and leaves it to cook for 10 hours.

After 10 hours have elapsed, remove the lamb breast and put on a pan.
Shown above is the remains of the beach cabbage leaves.

Chef Refslund shows his collection of wild herbs from the beach, like the young beach cabbage, sea beans. He calls these ingredients “Danish street food.” When he discovered these beach herbs, he started using them in his dishes.

Yes, that’s charcoal and sand under the pan.
While the lamb breast is on the pan, add some of the beach herbs. The herbs will cook in the fat of the lamb breast.

The meat is pink because the salt of the sand goes into the meat.