Thinking about the MAD Foodcamp in Denmark and wishing I could have gone

Rene Redzepi of restaurant Noma in Copenhagen is an inspiration for anyone who cares about food, art, life, and sustainability. I asked for and received his book Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine for Christmas last year, and perhaps a few photos of the book can suggest the wonder and beauty that Redzepi creates with his food and with his ideas about food.

The photos in the book remind me of the spare cold light of Scandinavia, the briny taste of the air in Reykjavik, the chill of mist rising from a Swedish field in late August as the weather turns its steps toward fall, winter, and darkness. Beautiful, evocative images and memories that truly say something about time and place.

Sadly I can only imagine what his food tastes like, because most of the book's recipes use ingredients that are impossible to find here and cooking techniques that are far beyond what I have the equipment for or wherewithal to do. Also, the chances that I would ever get to eat at his restaurant are slim to none. But none of that matters. The difficulty of the food here is not really the point; the point is the inspiration, the ideas about food and the world we live in.

Carrying forth inspiration and ideas was also part of the point of the MAD Foodcamp that took place last weekend in Denmark. Unfortunately, I only learned of it a few days ago and wouldn't have been able to attend anyway, but I have been scouring Twitter (search #MADfoodcamp) and the Internet to learn more about what happened and to perhaps add some ideas to the conversation.

I found several reports from the event. Kalle Bergman, editor of Honest Cooking: The Food Magazine called this event "a nerdy Woodstockish foodie festival and conference." You can read more on the symposium cum food festival at Food Republic, Classic Copenhagen, and Katie Parla.

But the article that inspired most food for thought (pardon the pun) came from flavourcountryfeedlot, who talks about the disconnect between people like those who participated in the conference and have a driving passion for food and the "millions of people [who] don't think they have enough time to find or cook good, real food, or that good food is worth the effort."

I am afraid I don't have much sympathy for those who don't care about good food. Trying to convince someone who doesn't care about food to think it matters is akin to convincing a religious person to stop believing or an atheist to believe: It's not going to happen. You do, or you don't. What I do understand and sympathize with is the lack of time or energy to source good food, cook it well, and present it in inspired and inspiring ways. Most people have enormous and constant demands on their time; balancing competing priorities is the order of the day--every day.

So if you are not a chef or don't have the bankroll to eat in wildly creative restaurants most of the time, what are you supposed to do with these ideas? Because these are extraordinary ideas about recognizing the wider variety of edible foods that exist, about falling in love with the wonderful array of foods that your place and season have to offer, about creating layers of sense memories that connect you to the beauty and life of the world.  

Here are some thoughts about what you can do. Start with the recognition that food can express your life, your values--can express what inspires you and makes your life beautiful. Obviously, food is also a bare bones necessity: You don't eat, you starve. Why not make it matter? Why do so many other things take precedence? Do you really need a perfect lawn? Do you really need to watch that episode of whatever show? Does your kid really need to participate in every after-school activity that you can squeeze into the schedule, or could you spend that time with him or her creating memories together in the kitchen? Unfortunately, Redzepi's comment that "there is no short cut or easy answer to good food" contains some truth. Good food does take effort and time, but so does anything that's worthwhile.

A second thought is to not try to be perfect, and this is a thought I struggle with in many contexts (I am a recovering perfectionist). You can make a difference in small ways, in inconsistent ways. Trying to get it absolutely right all the time is a good recipe for giving up or losing heart. If all you can do is eat frozen dinners all week, but then cook an amazing Sunday meal to serve your family with beautiful, local ingredients, wouldn't that make a difference? In your life and in the life of your kids? Start small and see where that takes you.

Next, look around. What do you know about the place you live? Try the farmers' markets, talk to people. Maybe someone makes amazing cheese just 15 miles from your house, and you never even knew. Take a class in foraging--it'll be great, and you'll get outside for a while. Probably get some exercise too. If you know someone who is a great cook or knows a lot about local food, talk to him or her and get some ideas. Maybe even angle for an invitation to dinner. He or she will probably feel great that you asked.

Never be afraid to try something new. How do you think that anyone ever comes up with anything? By trying something. And often by failing at least the first time. Experimentation in the kitchen is usually fun, sometimes successful, and always informative. (Here's our dry-ice ice cream experiment.) See something at the farmer's market you've never tried before? Try it! Get some! Ask the farmer what to do with it. If he or she doesn't know, look around the Internet--at some point, someone somewhere probably cooked it successfully and has some good ideas for you.      

What I want to convey with these ideas and any others that I come up with going forward is that good, beautiful, and artful food doesn't have to be exclusive. I can't make a 50- to 60-ingredient dish--hell, I don't want to make a 50- to 60-ingredient dish--but I can be inspired by how it looks and the ideas behind it. I can start looking around on the ground to find edible plants among the weeds and try to learn to cook them well. I can experiment with new varieties in the garden and see what works. I can take this whole ethos of understanding your food through the lens of time and place and figure out how to make that work for me in a home cook's kitchen. And most of the time, what I will come up with is pretty good, sometimes it will be an unmitigated disaster, but it should always be interesting and inspiring.

Now, I have to go and make some plum jam.
 

So what am I doing with this blog anyway?

For weeks, perhaps months, I have been planning to start this blog about sourcing, making, and eating food, but I have procrastinated. I kept trying to decide what blog service to use and what to call it and what is it going to be about and do I have a point of view that's fresh.I hesitated, hemmed, hawed. A few nights ago, I was trying to sleep and writing my First Blog Post in my head, and I asked myself: What's taking so long? Why haven't you done this yet? The service and the name aren't that big a deal, are they? Then a tiny voice piped up from the back of the room (because I view my mind as a vast conference room with lots of people there to listen to what I have to say--no, I don't really, but I thought it was kind of fun to imagine anyway), so, where was I? Oh yeah, little voice, back of room, said "But what if it isn't any good?" Yeah, you nailed it, tiny voice: I was scared. I am scared. What if this isn't any good? What if no one wants to read what I have to say about food? And what is it exactly that I want to say about food? Food is good. Enjoyed with friends, it's wonderful. A lot of people are out there talking about food. What do I have to bring to the table?

Well, these are some reasons I want to write about food:

About a year ago in January, my husband Mike and I borrowed an audiobook version of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. When we were done with that, we went on to Omnivore's Dilemma, which more than any other book made us want to opt out of the industrial food chain and so we set out to do that. It wasn't easy, and it still isn't. We have changed our behaviors with regard to getting and making food, and we have changed the way that we think about food, but the practices of avoiding food shipped from halfway across the world (especially in winter), of making your own, of trying to eat mostly local and sustainably raised food are hard. But to us they are incredibly meaningful and so we keep at it. In fact, trying to eat the way that we want to eat is so meaningful to us that I hope to be able to share some of what we have learned and hopefully get others to opt out of industrial food too. Because I also think that the more people opt out of it, the easier getting local, sustainable, nonindustrial, and seasonable food will become as local food distribution becomes more efficient. So there's a selfish aspect to it: I want you to do what I do so that it gets easier for everyone.

Then, there is the love and passion aspect to it, and that encompasses so many different components that I easily get lost. There's the quality of the food that I get from people I directly support. There's the sense of belonging to a community, a place, where I have a stake in the soil, in the air and water, and in the people who live near me. One of the most potent ways I know to connect to the world is to eat. Food is a distillation of sun, soil, place, air. In his book,  NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine and in his food, chef Rene Redzepi talks about this connection between what we eat and where we are as a way to create sense memories, and in a sense to create an ephemeral art. I cannot create the kind of art that Rene creates, but to take some of that spirit and infuse it into the quotidien is something I want to strive for. I think that the practice of thinking and writing about food can help me to make daily life an art form, which makes my life more meaningful and more beautiful and hopefully does the same for my family.

Finally (at least for this post--there are more reasons and I will develop them as we go along), I want to teach what I know about cooking by passing along my successes and sharing my failures. Hopefully in the process I can keep getting better and learning more.

So this blog will be a mish-mash of recipes and tips, of food politics, of raving about the good (and perhaps the bad), of sharing stuff I learn, of creating art. Hopefully it will entertain, inform, inspire--I mean, why else would anyone write?

And to get started with the recipes, here's my recipe for roast chicken (which I planned to have for dinner tonight, but a family thing suddenly came up):

1 whole chicken (I get mine from Haskins Family Farm, which I will rave about at another time)
salt, white pepper
2 lemons (unfortunately usually not local, but I do have a lemon tree now!), one juiced, the other cut in half
herbs to taste or as available
unsalted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees
2. Butter a baking dish (you want it to be deep so that it can hold some water)
3. Rinse the chicken with cold water, inside and out
4. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels
5. Grab about a tablespoon of salt and rub the inside and outside of the chicken (sometimes you will need more--don't be afraid to salt a lot!)
6. Rub the inside and outside of the chicken with white pepper
7. Stuff the lemon halves inside the chicken along with any herbs that you have available (if you don't have any, you can skip this)
8. Place the chicken in the baking dish, fill the bottom wiht about an inch of water
9. Put it in the over for 30 minutes
10. After 30 minutes, pull it out, turn the chicken over in the dish, and pour lemon juice all over it
11. Back in the oven, 20 minutes
12. Pull it out, turn it over, and rub the chicken with 1 tablespoon of butter
13. Back in the oven, 20 minutes
14. Out of the oven, pour pan drippings over the chicken, flip it over, in again, 15 minutes (you will keep doing this last step for 2-3 more times depending on the size of the chicken). I usually check doneness by poking the joint between the leg and the body to see if the juices that run out are clear. Others prefer a thermometer, which should read about 165 degrees in the thickest part of the thigh.
15. When it is done, remove the chicken from the dripping and let it stand and rest on a platter for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime, you can make gravy with the drippings. Use a fat separator and let the drippings divide into two layers. Grab about 2-3 tablespoons of the fat and put it into a pan. Add 2-3 tablespoons of flour to the fat and cook for a few minutes (don't let it burn). Then whisking fast, add the drippings (minus fat) to the fat and flour in the pan. It will thicken quickly. If it gets too thick, you can always add some milk, cream, or stock to thin it. Salt and pepper to taste (mine is usually pretty salty, so I definitely check the salt before adding any).

I usually serve roast chicken with roasted root vegetables (whatever is in season or I have around the house) and some kind of salad. Again, it really depends on what's available and looks good at the farmer's market.