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PBS station. >> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: Coming up, Chef David Chang has fun foraging with Chef Rene Redzepi... >> The essence of it is that the cook has a connection with it. >> CHANG: Crazy. >> BOURDAIN: ...samples the unripe... >> They cannot just be unripe. They have to be perfectly unripe. >> BOURDAIN: ...and overripe treats in Rene's kitchen at Noma... >> This is a leek that's almost a year-and-a-half old. >> CHANG: Which is insane. >> BOURDAIN: ...travels outside Copenhagen for some lessons on farming... >> It's just like asparagus. >> CHANG: So good! >> BOURDAIN: ...and explores the seafood of Denmark. >> This mahogany clam is 200 years old. >> CHANG: I feel wrong cooking it. That's delicious. Put that on the menu tonight. >> BOURDAIN: Enter<i> The Mind of</i> <i>a Chef.</i> Copenhagen, Denmark has become, to the surprise of many, the center of the food revolution. Leading this revolution is an unassuming juggernaut, Chef Rene Redzepi. His restaurant Noma is ranked number one in the world and his strict regional cooking philosophy pushes Nordic cuisine to new creative heights. Rene challenges his chefs to explore, rediscover, and design dishes using ingredients found solely within the Scandinavian landscape. You may think that this kind of philosophy is limiting, and that would make sense. But the nightly 12-course meal Rene and his team create at Noma proves this assumption wrong. And Redzepi's influence is not limited to just Denmark but to the entire culinary landscape. A visit with Rene usually begins with a trip to the forest, or in this case the seashore for a bit of foraging. >> Jesus, look at these, man, beach asparagus. >> CHANG: That's crazy. >> Mmm. Oh yeah, here we go. These are the young shoots of scurvy. If you kind of go in here, you see how much more there is of it. Just shooting everywhere. This particular plant right here is one of the reasons Noma still made it to this day. >> CHANG: Crazy. >> I've always considered a Scandinavian nut as a spicy nation, you know? This was truly one of the moments where I thought if we have cilantro growing right on the shoreline, what else is out there to be found? >> CHANG: No way. Let me pedal. I'm not going in there. >> BOURDAIN: After a relaxing morning foraging by the sea, Chang and Rene head to the test kitchens of Noma to make a little magic. >> CHANG: We're in the lab at Noma, just across the street from the restaurant. Am I drunk or are we moving around right now? >> We're moving. We're on a boat. Maybe you're drunk actually. Let's cook this dish. We are in a region where butter, dairy, still prevails. You could say that dairy is our pork. This is smoked butter. We gently heat it. We dump in our asparagus, from this specific farm that is situated in a specific area with a very specific soil. In this very near area of this asparagus field, we just pick all the plants in the wild. >> CHANG: Literally is across the street almost. >> Across the street. They live together, we serve them. These are hop shoots. So we pour this on too. Gently, gently break down the hops. This is enough heat so that it cooks but keeps the moment where it goes from raw to cooked. I mean you could just serve this on a plate and you want to eat it, right? >> CHANG: It's harder to plate that to look natural than it is to plate it like a clock you know. It's pretty. >> I got lucky. Keep it to that. I'm not too sure I can do that again. Now what we'll do is we'll want to add like a rounded, meaty tone is we add snails. We heat in a bit of snail broth. They have been cooked. >> CHANG: A lot of people don't know about snails and in America we have to sort of import the snails. >> Why? >> CHANG: Nobody, not to my knowledge if they are, they're not making them delicious, so we're still getting them from Burgundy. >> But don't you have snails? >> CHANG: Oh, absolutely, but we can't serve them unless they're USDA approved. >> Okay, so you can't go out in a forest after a rainy day and collect 1,000 snails, take them back to Momofuku, boil them with lots of plants, serve them... >> CHANG: Soy sauce. >> With the kimchi juice. We have these plants which we just lay there onto the plate. >> CHANG: You have your cooks that pick these veg and explain to the diner where it came from so the diner has a connection to where the food came from. >> Yeah, exactly, but that's the most important point is that I think it's very important as well that the customer has a connection. But, for me, the essence of it is that the cook has a connection with it. You will be amazed at how many cooks don't know that white asparagus is a plant that grows under the soil. Which for me is weird. That is what defines our restaurant, that connection. All right, so, at the farm we have some pheasant egg. These have been poached. We take away the white. We add the snails and now come the plants. Woodruff, which tastes significantly like tonka bean, young shoots of blackberries, the leaves of the birch tree pickled into vinegar for acidity. These almondy-tasting leaves, which are called rowanberry, and some hop greens. These plants are distinct in their own flavor. So you take a bite, there's a new texture. Maybe you get a piece of the snail, which is rich, earthy and then, pop, you get like the citrus tones of the spruce. It's a very, very complex dish. This is fermented red currant juice, blended with woodruff. It's the sauce. There you go. >> CHANG: It's a good dish. >> I would love to live at a place that looked like that as well, honestly. I love everything about these things. It's like a wonderful, happy marriage. >> CHANG: Yes. We have a smörgåsbord of shellfish and we're just going to freestyle, off-the-cuff cooking. >> I want to do scallop. You want to do scallop? >> CHANG: Yeah. >> Look, look, it's like a heart pounding. >> CHANG: Eating raw scallops is one of my favorite things. I almost rather eat scallops raw than cooked. This is the... what you were calling salad hearts, >> Yeah, you have the salad and you have the heart and then we make sure that we take the root as well. It's crunchy, nutty in flavor. You can sauté it, you can cook it. >> CHANG: I just did a quick pickle. >> That's a good idea. >> CHANG: Where are you getting these apples from? >> They're from last year. They preserve and actually develop flavor that is really good. You made like an apple dashi, right? >> CHANG: Yeah. And here I just mixed together buttermilk water, soy and apple juice. >> Oooh. >> CHANG: And this is the flower of the scurvy grass. It's got a nice little heat and spiciness. So it adds a little pepperiness to the dish. Go ahead. >> Mm-hmm. It's really good. >> CHANG: Not bad. >> This is so exotic to me. It's really good, man. >> CHANG: Thanks, man. One of the beautiful things about Rene's cooking is eating things that I had never had before. One thing that's been a staple has been the green strawberry and no one would ever think about putting it on a menu. >> Taste it first of all. You would wait until they are bright red, sweet and delicious. Now they're acidic. They cannot just be unripe, they have to be perfectly unripe. >> CHANG: But perfectly unripe is an extraordinary contradiction. >> This one I have in this hand is perfectly unripe. This one is an unripe unripe. This is very green while this one is white green. That's what we want. >> CHANG: Perfectly unripe. >> Perfectly unripe strawberry. I'm going to do these with a scallop. You have to get really close now. Its last breath. It's incredibly sweet right now. I'm just going to plate one up. I just want a dish where everything's kind of raw still and full of life. Then I'll add a few plants. Stone crop just like this. Then I'll add some juice. Some of this fresh sweet pea juice. >> CHANG: That's beautiful, buddy. >> It took five hours to gather, five minutes to arrange on a plate and it will take 30 seconds to consume. May I feed you? >> CHANG: Please. That's delicious. Put that on the menu tonight. >> Check it out. Each line on this mahogany clam represents a year of it's life. So when we get these in they are usually between 200 to 220 years old. In 2007, they found one 405 years old. >> CHANG: I feel wrong cooking it. You know? >> That's the point. How do you cook something like this? There's a clam inside which is very, very, very special. So, going to char this leek. >> CHANG: So nice out. I don't know if people understand, we're cooking on a house boat adjacent from Noma, his restaurant, on a beautiful day in Copenhagen. You can't beat this. When people see roasted vegetables, you know what they only probably roast ever? Red peppers, green peppers on shish kabobs . >> Let's go in and cook this. >> CHANG: Yes. >> I'm actually going to put them into a container while they're hot. Add a touch of oil to them. Salt. Let them cool down and steam here. Are you ready for this, Chang, just to show you while I open it? >> CHANG: That is insane. >> Check out the shell. This will just last anything. >> CHANG: Mahogany clam. >> The thing we eat is this part here, this guy here. >> CHANG: That's it. >> Just cut it off so we can see it. This guy. Check this out because this is the special part. This animal is 200 years old. I'm going to slice it. And then as you slice it you will see. >> CHANG: It's so meaty. >> It's so meaty. Look at all this, which has so much texture to it. So I'm slicing it thin. Taste this. There's not a lot of the coral on it. It's actually the most meaty part there is. >> CHANG: That's extraordinary. >> Two hundred years in the making. I'm just going to cut this stem. So I'm going to put these on here. So that, you know, you can have a mouthful. I'll add a bit of the beach mustard. I think it needs a touch of spice. Then I'm going to put clam juice with a bit of butter in it. We add a bit of oil. That's it. >> CHANG: I think that's beautiful. >> BOURDAIN: The magic to Rene's cooking begins just outside Copenhagen in the fields of an anarchist farmer, Soren. >> Mr. Soren. >> Hi, Rene. And you have a friend? >> Yeah. >> This is a little bit of the old leek field. You see this one here and here you see a tiny bulb. When I take the leek out, then it slips this one in the ground and then the plant, a new leek for next year. >> CHANG: You pick that off and boom. >> So we could do this for eight years without putting a new seed. >> That's amazing. >> That's really amazing. I just leave everything, we don't control it. Leeks are bi-annual but nobody thinks about it. We just kill it after one year. >> CHANG: How old is that one? >> This one is planted last year in April or something like that. if you do like this it's just like asparagus. Oh, sorry. I cooked it with asparagus many times and it's so good. >> CHANG: So good. >> It's very, very good. It still gives you an onion breath, though. >> CHANG: I always have onion breath. It's all good. >> BOURDAIN: It's Soren who led Rene to use what he calls vintage vegetables, which basically means vegetables that are way, way past their prime, but when cooked properly are still delicious. Like these potatoes. They've been sitting around for almost a year, intensifying in flavor. >> All right, so a pile of... >> (Bleep) potatoes are what we named them. >> A pile of (bleep). >> Actually it's a waste product from potato, from one year and a half. If you store potatoes too long then they will start growing potato from potato so it's concentrated potato. >> CHANG: That's intensely... something. >> Very intense, yeah. We're not doing anything new. It has been done before. We just forgot to use it. I don't think I'm a very good farmer, but I think I have an open mind. >> CHANG: It's very, very kung fu master. >> You can look in two ways. You can have a very broad horizon or you can go very close. If you go very close you see the potential in what your surroundings have. That's no limits of the potentials I have here. Here we have, for instance, sorrel. Normally you use the small leaves like this. The stem of almost everything is very different from the root and the leaves. And you can cook the stem. And nobody thinks about it that way except these new restaurants like Noma. >> You want to taste something crazy? I'm not saying it's good, it's just crazy. >> CHANG: That's crazy. >> It's a new kind of kitchen thinking that gives a big respect to both the plants and the meat. This is a place where you really feel life and death. I think that's very essential for me. You get challenged all the time and I think if you get challenged then you live. If you don't get challenged and if you don't seek the challenge, then you die. >> CHANG: This dish is about trash. >> Yes. Taking the stuff that we usually throw out and finding uses for it. Like this, this is a leek that's almost a year-and-a-half old. >> CHANG: Which is insane. >> It's insane. Usually you would just throw them out and their delicious. They're juicy and crunchy and better than a leek. We're going to grill some stuff. We're going to go out and grill some of these ingredients. So I burn these. A cucumber this shape, this is trash. >> CHANG: They're not allowed to sell it unless it looks, uniform, right? >> Uniform so they fit in the case. There you go. We're all good. Let's go in. So what we're going to do now is put them in a container. We add an oil of wild thyme. Then we seal it for like 30 minutes. We do the same thing with these stalks and stems here. Look at all these. I've thrown tons and tons and tons of these stalks out, you know? We just put them in a strainer. They don't need to be cooked a lot. Just touched by heat, in this case just warm butter. It could be water. Now they're still full of life. Another trash is a milk skin. Everybody's seen it in their home. You cook milk and you leave it and you come back to it and there's a disgusting skin on top. In this case we just lift it off gently, cover these grilled ingredients. Take a few stalks that are pungent and fragrant. And then this is a type of seaweed butter. You see it's almost like an olive tapenade. As a liquid we have buttermilk whey. You love buttermilk. >> CHANG: I do. >> So do I. This is strained buttermilk. That whey that drips off. And then a bit of this thyme oil. It's important that it doesn't boil. As soon as it gets too high in heat the acidity, the light disappears. And we have a vinaigrette. >> CHANG: That's beautiful. >> Just like that. That's it, it's finished. >> CHANG: Trash. >> Green trash. Not white trash. (laughter) >> Honestly when we first started out with this project, we were... you know, "Is this even possible? Is there enough ingredients to do 20 dishes?" And there is, of course. There's ingredients to do 1,000 dishes if you see the possibilities. I don't think there are such things as bad ingredients that nature made, you know. Its just a matter of kind of taming it or decoding it. That's what we're doing, we're decoding our soil, our region. >> BOURDAIN: It's true Rene's cooking philosophy may take the idea of eating local to an extreme point, but by setting boundaries in his kitchen, he is pushing his team to be more creative. And the result is a restaurant leading the way to a vibrant, modern Nordic cuisine. >> CHANG: I think that right now Noma's in this period where they're extraordinarily influential and fruitful and really working so well together as a team. Just eating here, it's just on point.
