The Fantastic Four are now somewhere through their fifth or six reimagining since I used to be a fan of them in the UK comic Smash back in the 1960s, in those days, hard as it is to imagine, Marvel had no presence in the UK and some clever comic publishers got licenses to reprint Marvel's stories (with British spelling of course) in comics like Smash, Fantastic and Terrific. Even now Johnny Storm's catch-phrase: "Flame On" as he turned into the human torch reminds me of sitting reading these comics in my grandparent's house in the centre of Swansea.
Well it seems a good title for today's blog as at Ekstedt, the one Michelin starred restaurant in Stockholm, it is all about cooking with flaming fire.
Why am I here
Like earlier in the holiday when I was in Bergen, my choice of Ekstadt among the 13 restaurants with stars in the city, was influenced by hearing Niklas Ekstadt speak of his commitment to flame based cooking when he appeared with Chris 'Flamebaster' Roberts on his S4C series about Scandinavian cooking. We are glad we made the choice.
While we are here Niklas is in London promoting the opening of his new restaurant Ekstedt at The Yard in the Old Scotland Yard Hotel. I discovered this due to my sister who watches Saturday Kitchen, who told me he appeared there on the morning after our meal at his Stockholm restaurant.
But while he wasn't here, his brigade did him real justice in bringing his commitment to life (or should I say to flame).
Getting to the Restaurant
From the hotel it was only nine minutes by bus to the restaurant. This was the route
However, the dotted line from the bus stop to the restaurant wasn't quite as clear. Again Google Maps tried to convince me that where I wanted to be was somewhere other than where it was. Again, if I'd had x-ray vision I could have seen Ekstedt from where Google told us we had arrived, but in fact we need to walk ten yards turn right and walk up another street. On this occassion, the location having evaded both my and Drew's best efforts at discovery I rang the restaurant and the person who answered asked where we were.
H - We are at Sturegallerian with a Subway opposite
Waitress - walk 10 meters and turn right
H - OK, we have done that
W - Can you see a women in a black jacket waving at you?
H - Yes!!
A simple human wave worked much more effectively than the technology.
Arrival
As soon as we arrived we were welcomed warmly. Our jackets (Macs-in-Sacs) were removed and we were seated in a delightful lounge area.
The longue included the restaurant's Michelin plaque and a busy young chef preparing little treats for us.
We were asked what we wanted as aperitives and were offered the non-alcoholic drinks menu.
Drew choose Golden Cider Company, non-alcoholic apple cider
This cider is made here in Stockholm from Apples grown in the Skane region in Sothern Sweden.
This was made by Rålund and was a Sparkling Blueberry Juice, it provided a really fizzy refrshing taste.
We were the presented with the menus and asked if we had any allergies or dislikes.
They then showed us the non-alcoholic drink options for the night and asked us if we wanted to order by the glass or have the drinks to accompany the menu, we choose this of course.
We were given warm towels to freshen up
Again our eagerness to use them means the only photo is of completed ones!
We then received the first of our little tasting plates - Smoked fresh cheese, tomato and raspberries tartlet
The amazing tingle such simple ingredients make on your tongue when prepared by high quality chefs, is just amazing. I could combine these ingredients and probably enjoy the combination, but I could never achieve the level of complexity of flavours they manage here.
The next dish was Roasted hay, dry aged beef and lumpfish roe in a tiny tart.
Getting the tart into the mouth without any of the hay dropping off was quite a challenge, but we made it!! The exquisite pop of the roe and the long luscious taste of the raw beef were so well combined we felt delighted we were eating somewhere than could manage such flavours.
Into the Kitchen
One of our favourite UK restaurants - Whatley Manor - has the approach of taking us into the kitchen to meet the chefs and discuss the food. But here it went beyond meeting the chefs into a show.
Given the role of fire in everything this restaurant does one of the chefs, a Greek guy, introdcued us to his colleagues and began to explore what the fire could do.
He talked us through the various processes in the kitchen - fire powered oven, warming box, live flame - while aslo preparing a dish of food for us - The dish is cast iron flatbread, vendace roe and fennel pollen. Though in the photo below it is only in preparation - you can see the flatbreads.
He then introduced us to the Quail that is going to be cooked for us to eat later in the meal in the hot box above the fire.
Here he introduced us to another colleague, an Italian chef, who demonstrated her mastery of fire cooking. I was so impressed I used the video function on my phone.
We were also shown the butter churner that had been used this morning to create the butter and whey which are forming part of the dishes to come.
In the meantime I seem to have eaten the flatbread without photographing it. So, we move onto the second dish. This uses the Flambadou, a slightly scary implement used to baste what ever is being cooked. Indeed Christ Robert's nickname 'Flamebaster' comes from his use of the implement. You can see it being used over the scallops here.
Then the roe is carefully extracted. We are informed that this roe is Sturgeon caviar, but it has been extrtacted from the fish by massage, not by killing the fish. The restaurant's fish supplier has had his Sturgeon for so long that each of them has been named and chefs can request the roe by name, as each as a subtly different flavour.
The roe is then added to the basted scallop
and the Scallop is served. The use of flame in cooking the scallop is so evident in its rich flavouring, a little crunchy with fire on one side, moist and juicy on the other and enhanced wonderfully by the caviar.
To the table
The first of the pairing drinks arrives at this time. It is a fermented fruit juice made with rhubarb, gooseberries and cherry blossom, it has the taste of early summer about it.
The dish with which it is served is blackcurrant fired arctic char, green tomato and cucumber.
The photo shows it after the crisped blackcurrant leaf is removed, so you can see the innards of the dish. The char, a lovely fish, is gently cooked, remaining juicy. The blackcurrant flavour is picked up in the blackcurrant oil in the sauce as well as on the leaf. The drink works so well with the dish, reminding me of picking berries in sunny days when my parents would take us to Shropshire, to the farm to which my Dad had been evacuated during World War II. Food is so good at evoking memories.
The next dish is prepared before us. It uses some of the whey I mentioned when in the kitchen. The waiter brings a tray with burnign coal on it and then inserts the coal into the container with the whey, so it gets a ember flavour.
Hopefully you can see it fizzing in the glass container.
It is served with a very yellow, delightful pat of homemade butter, churned in the wooden churner we saw earlier.
When they whey is ready it is poured over the lovely home made butter
and served with a sourdough bread for dipping into the melting butter and whey.
What a wondeful way to make a bread course more than just about the bread, but to bring a new complexity of flavour and a clear evidence the the restaurants flame-driven culture.
Before our next course we were served out second drink. Oxidized pears, smoked hay and lemon verbena.
a great combination, the white currant with a more gentle profile than its red and black relatives works well with the sweet dessert apple and the rounding-off flavour of the butter, very easy to drink, in fact I did drink it to quickly and the poor sommelier had to come back and give me more before the plump seaweed fired langoustines arrived.
I hope you can see the amazing colour of this drink. The pear flavour is much sweeter than I'd have expected, but the smokiness of the hay and the sharpness of the verbena help to make it another fresh flavoured drink, as must have been the intention. As the next dish might have been called pork with salad.
Though its real title is birch-fired and preserved summer vegetables and Mangaliza
The taste of summer continues and again the summer tastes of the drink and the summer flavours of the vegatables combine with the fatty, full-bodeied flavours of the lovely Mangaliza, a old breed of pig which has come back into fashion in recent years. There were tiny bits of fried Mangaliza lard through the dish acting as little cruncy treats - wonderful.
A side dish was served with it, a sabayon of pea pods
Yes, it really is that green. Again the sense of summer, now coming to an end, but with its glories still being captured in the flavours, worked so well.
Our next drink was produced from white currants, Ingrid-Marie and browned butter
The plates were dressed with celeriac and solaris sauce and a nasturtium leaf.
Solaris, a white wine grape often used in German fizzy wines, has an earthy hazelnutty type flavour and this works so well with the celeriac which also tastes of the earth in a proud root vegetable kind of way. The langoustine shines through this, the rich butteriness of the pairing drink makes perfect sense to accompany this.
Again we had a little accompaniment to the dish; a doughnut with langoustine shells and sea buckthorn: berries and greens.
It was delightful to rip the doughnut into pieces and use it to mop up the celeriac sauce - yum, how delicious.
The next drink then made its appearance was Aronia berries, red currant and blackcurrant leaves. Sadly, I seem to have forgotten to photograph it, perhaps as it arrived at the same time as the quail. It had a rich red wine, a claret I think, flavour, ready for the poultry.
This was the second time we had seen the quail, as it was shown to us earlier in the kitchen, before it had begun to cook. Now here it is perfectly cooked and butchered.
Smoked on juniper wood and served with green peas and rose it tasted lightly gamey.
Yes, I couldn't resist picking it up by the leg and consuming it. I'm not great at selfies, as I focus my eyes on the button I need to press for the picture, not on the camara lens, but here is the quail ready to go down the hatch.
It was served with a black garlic brioche
this layered loaf was served for dipping in the quail sauce, and it did act as a good mop for the flavour.
We were then asked if we would like a cheese course, an optional element, I, as usual got quite exited until the waiter described the course and focussed on the waffles and elderberry jam. I wasn't convinced it would work for me, but we ordered it anyway.
It was served with a drink of red plums and fennel seed kombucha
the plums gave this a rich flavour and the seeds added an aniseed taste, but not so strong a one as to drown out the plums.
The cheese arrived it was a fondue with baked svedjan gårdsost and wrångebäck two strong Swedish cheeses.
I must admit I associate fondues with the 1970s, when they had a moment of fashion and would have probably preferred the cheese in chunks. But both of the cheeses, mixed together, here, did have the strength of flavour to survive the melting process and the buckwheat waffles were also much more to my taste than I expected - so I ended up being very happy about it.
As regards the Elderberry Jam and Butter
I ignored them, it is all about the cheese for me. Drew, however, enjoyed the salty butter - almost as salty as the Swansea butter my father used to have according to him.
Our final drink of the evening was cloudberries, black apples and clarified milk
a combination that was to sweet and creamy for me, so Drew was forced to eat both - he didn't complain! [Co-pilot's note: I did, dear readers, I was as full as an egg.]
This was joined with a woodruff and blueberry delice
Wood fired cooking is a very ancient way of doing the art, it is something that can, and has, been updated in a sublime way.
The darker sharper apples were mellowed by the cloudberries, the milk clearly gave its colour to the drink, but wasn't noticeable as a flavour.
This was served with smoked cream, strawberries and spruce
This was joined with a woodruff and blueberry delice
the waiter explained the woodruff, the explanation came as a surprise as it is so familiar to me in English cooking, especially in desserts. In England before the reformation it was known as Mary's bedstraw and its smell has long been associated with good health and good sleep. It's flavour was quite delicious as it perfumed the blueberry in this layered dessert.
But there was more on the same theme a wood oven fired cep mushroom soufflé with woodruff and blueberries
Yes, a dessert with mushrooms - it was light airy, not overly sweet and perfect for both of us.
We were then invited back into the lounge where we were served with a double espresso each and some petit fours.
These were wood oven baked biscuit, elderflower and lilac, Ember baked almond potato and spun sugar, preserved cloudberries, meringue and lemon verbena. Again Drew helped me out.
Then the bill box arrived, we paid and left, having had a wonderful experience and a delicious meal.
Wood fired cooking is a very ancient way of doing the art, it is something that can, and has, been updated in a sublime way.
Back to the hotel
We left the restaurant at 10.40pm and walking across the road, the bus arrived at the stop even before we did. We got on and were back at the hotel at 10.50pm. This journey is the 19th use of our 72-hour, 360 krona, SL travel ticket. This means each journey was only 18.95kr that is £1.48 per ride!!
