Three Dishes with René Redzepi| Recipes Articles

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Cooking may be as much a means of self-expression as any of the arts.

- Fannie Farmer

Three Dishes with René Redzepi

This new column by Anjali Kumar invites you on a weekly adventure to great restaurants around the world to meet the amazing chefs, mixologists, restaurateurs and sommeliers behind them and the foods that inspired their work today. This week, she sits down with Chef René Redzepi of noma in Copenhagen to find out which dishes shaped his cooking style and outlook today.

René Redzepi (b. 1977) was born in Copenhagen to a Danish mother and a Macedonian father. Drawing on his unique cultural heritage, he has been widely credited with re-inventing Nordic cuisine. In 2003, at the age of just 25, after already having worked at both El Bulli and The French Laundry, Redzepi became head chef, co-owner and co-founder of noma (from NOrdisk and MAd, meaning "Nordic food"). Since then, he has quickly become one of the world's most respected chefs. In April, noma won the #1 World's Best Restaurant at the 2010 S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards. NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine (Phaidon) is his first major cookbook. Redzepi currently lives in Copenhagen, with his wife and daughter.

What is the dish that:

1. Inspired your love of food?

That is a big question, a difficult question. Too many to name one. If I think back to a dish that was something special— in Macedonia we did roast chicken. When we had that it was quite rare because it meant we had to slaughter one of the chickens. And that happened rarely. And I remember it being cooked in the wood-fire oven. Underneath the chicken was rice with chilis and condiments in it and all the fat and the juices from the chicken dripped into the rice. That was a special thing that somehow keeps staying with me.

2. Is your signature?

Again that is so impossible to say. If we have a signature "thing", it is the fact that the menu is constantly changing according to what the weather brings us. Therefore, I just can't name one— it is just impossible for me. Our "signature" is that our restaurant has a pact with nature and the food we have at the restaurant is what the weather brings us.

3. You cook on your night off?

Cooking at home reminds me of why I am a chef. Cooking for friends and family, serving and giving them food, is the essence for me of having a restaurant— to give. So I tend to cook in a very basic way at home— it is basic noma cooking. Lots of vegetables, very little fish, and even less meat. So it could be steamed spinach and you add some wild coriander to it. Grilled leeks is another one. The simplest of things.