Nordic Taste!

Emma and I picked ourselves up on a lovely Sunday and took off to Copenhagen for a Nordic Taste session at Copenhagen Cooking.

This is gonna be a long one.. prepare yourselves for an onslaught of foodporn!

First up we had, what turned out to be my fork choice! You see at the start when you get your ticket for 10 tastes, you get a little fork (the lady was very clear to not eat with it!) which you are to give to the favourite dish of the day. This dish is the dish of the day for me, while I liked a few a lot and had some clear favourites.. it was wicked hard to pick just the one so how did I pick this as my winner? I looked at everything as a whole experience.. now while you don't see in the photo a drink, there was one. So not only did you get an adorable tiny plate of food, you also got a little cracker and a drink and the whole experience just felt complete. Plus I think it took me back to my deliciousness noma experience back in 2011 with the pine and hay additions. I could have eaten another tiny plate of this piggy slowly cooked on hay if I was allowed.. just YUM!

After filling my mouth with pure deliciousness I headed to the next tent to partake in a mussel, with dill.. my track record with dill hasn't been the greatest since last year in Stockholm but I didn't let it deter me at all.. but maybe I should have because I really didn't like this mouthful. The mussel was fine, the dill was even fine but the crab soup.. I think it was crab soup was just not to my liking at all. I couldn't even finish it and it was only a small amount! Which actually happened a few times during the course of the day. As you can see the mussel dish looked really pleasing to the eye.. just not to my palette.

Now would have been a really great time to have a little drink to wash my mouth out.. instead however we moved over to the GRØD tent! We will be dining at this establishment one day. It is an establishment that serves porridge! All types! They had two dishes up for grabs at their tent, one savoury and one sweet and both divine! More please!

This next dish is something I have never tried before, deep fried pigs ear. I can honestly say that I will never allow it into my mouth again. Now while some people love and rave about it, I did not enjoy the squishy texture and flavour of just.. oil. You know that flavour when something is bland and is deep fried and has nothing enjoyable left.. well that is how I felt about this dish. The little meringue with fruity bits was really nice but that ear. No thank you. Another dish I couldn't finish!

Moving on from ears to a full vegetarian dish! Right up Emma's alley! I am not a fan of cold eggplant, but I had a small bite and it was quite nice. 

This next dish wasn't great but wasn't bad either.. it was the first time for me eating a chicken heart so here's to that! Quite chewy. Not a dish I would want to eat again but definitely glad I gave it a go. I was a bit disappointed in the little apple ball bombs that weren't really very apple-y. I think the dish needed more freshness and the apple would have supplied it, if it could be tasted.

Fried chicken! There is always a place for fried chicken at any food event, right? Sadly, I think this one should have been left off.. I didn't think much of the chicken. The rest of it was nice. Simple but nice.

Ravioli! Now here was a really good mouthful of food! Not only did it look great.. it tasted great! This dish is actually from a place in Malmö that Emma wants to go to but never gets around to booking. Maybe now that she has had a taste it will happen! 

Now cake! The only cake there was. It was a reasonable cake, nothing special. Those orange bombs are called sea-buckthorn and were rather good. They seemed to make appearances at several of the tents (even ones we didn't eat from). They were a new addition to my taste experiences.

Back on chicken.. there was nothing really wrong with this dish other than being too sweet and dry. The pickled beets were far too sweet for me and the chicken was dry. I think with a little more tang, it would have been a really good mouthful and the dryness of the chook could have been more forgiven.

We now move into our home turf! This dish is from a little place here in Hässleholm! A place where we should hopefully be dining next month as we got Emma's parentals vouchers last year to go. Given it was our home turf, this one got Emma's fork. Not just for the home turf advantage but also for the fact that it was a really yummy dish! The fennel sprinkled on top gives a little gold effect and a wonderful flavour to the entire dish. It was really enjoyable to myself and Emma. She is definitely getting better with this fish eating thing. 

I don't really have good things to say about this next dish. It lacked any finesse and while I am sure they made their own sausage, it just felt like an ordinary one from a supermarket. There was no love at all put into this dish and that wasn't help by me seeing them slapping it all together in a hurry. We were nearing the end and getting desperate to use our stamps and so just went with it. That's the problem with only being allowed to use one stamp per place.

Moving on and away from snags, we headed into some crab barley risotto. There were apples on it, my first apples were umm a weird texture but Em gave me some of hers and they were a little better.. I think I just got dud bits of apple that had been sitting for too long on warm risotto and gone a little... limp. An enjoyable dish though.

This dish! Delish! Beef tartare was polished off in one bite! I could have gone another of that! They were also the only place that didn't use the standard tiny plates. This dish was in my top 3.

It seems that after something I really love comes something that I couldn't eat. This fishy dish started off nice but the more I chewed the worse it got. I couldn't eat much of it at all. Definitely not to my liking and I like fish! The palette is a fickle mistress!

This next dish was once again porky, it was really good and one of the better dishes of the day even though I have no idea what the white stuff on my plate was. It looked like a potato mash but didn't taste or even have the texture of it. Actually the taste completely escaped me.. maybe I have tried too many things today and so my not so sophisticated palette went.. ENOUGH! I am  not sure but it was a decent one to end the stamps and experience on for me. Although, I would have liked to have had the very first one again!

Emma ended hers on another cod dish, which was really.. really good! It looked great and a perfect little mouthful so I got Emma to just put it all in and experience it all how it was meant to be!

After we finished up tasting food, we moved over to the bar and tasted a couple of drinks. A beer for me, and a rose for Emma. You see we needed a drink to really hash out who we were giving our forks too. What a really enjoyable day out in the sunshine and with food! We headed out the gates and into another area where we had been before the gates opened. Prior to heading in we had purchased some lamb salami and hazelnut salami.. oh and we had got a little taste of beer from a lovely lady promoting her stalls inside. Nice way to start if you ask me! Anyways, we headed back in as we had spotted some ice cream when we were there. Emma got a red currant ice cream... or as the Danish say.. RIBS!

While I had a rhubarb sorbet! Yum YUM!

We also discovered some really good chocolate which wasn't for bloody sale! How mean is that?! We took the guy's card and will buy some online come October. They were a new Christmas product line so we will have to wait. I have never been good at waiting!

With our cold treats in hand we headed off to Mikkeller & Friends to get our hands on the Copenhagen Cooking beer that they brewed special and to try a couple others. We even tried one of their beer chocolates! Quite nice indeed. I'd eat that again.

While we were in there we saw a girl walk off to go to the loo.. she walked towards the men's loo and Emma and I chuckled and a few seconds later she walks past in the other direction to head to the women's loo and so I turned to Emma and said.. "only you!" remembering when we were there last she used the men's! Bahahaha Then a little time passed and Emma needed to use the facilities so off she went to use the women's loo this time.. I then promptly received a message saying.. "the men's is brighter!" and well.. she would know now that she has experienced both! I wonder if the men's loo is brighter because they need to see what they are doing more than women? The things one ponders!