An excerpt by Piet Oudolf “Between Gardens and Wilderness”, from our latest book, Noma 2.0—

From the Ocean Season menu—

We’re now well into Ocean Season and we can feel the weather rapidly shifting toward longer, warmer days. Despite a surprise dusting of snow last week, the garden is waking from its slumber and turning more green every day. Both the test kitchen and lab are looking forward to our next menu—Vegetable—exploring the flavors and ferments that define the season.

Dear friends, we are on the search for a new colleague to join our garden and greenhouse team as Head Gardener.

While ice clarification might not be a new invention, it is a very common technique used by our team to produce a clear, expressive and pure liquid extraction from an otherwise cloudy or viscous medium. At any given time you’ll find something being ice-clarified here, be it a broth, juice, amazake, or other flavorful liquid. It isn’t uncommon to see multiple setups of frozen liquids swaddled in fine muslin cloth suspended over a container that slowly collects every drop of clarified product. By freezing a liquid solid and then letting it thaw slowly in cheesecloth, the solution will naturally fraction itself as each component of the mixture has a different freezing point. Elongating the thawing process and not disturbing the product allows for the solid structure to remain while the free liquids can flow into the reservoir below as they melt.

Over the years we’ve come to use kombu in myriad ways—from flours to salts to oils; the rich umami flavor derived from kelp is undeniable. But what about using this abundant resource in a sweet application? If you were to imagine seaweed as a fruit leather, you might think of this Aronia Kelp.

It’s weekend over at noma headquarters! Before we clock out though, we like to finish the week on Friday nights with a small (blind) wine tasting, often with a theme to do with the current pairing. This week we tried red wines from the Jura containing grape varieties that have mostly disappeared after the phylloxera epidemic of the late 19th century. Who knew that once upon a time petit béclan, enfariné, melon à queue rouge, geuche, and many more cultivars were often co-planted and blended in order to make a balanced whole? Nowadays these forgotten grape varieties are almost non-existent, but you can still find some winemakers using them, like the wine currently on our pairing made by Raphaël Monnier of Domaine Ratapoil, or some cuvées from Jean-François Ganevat or Julien Labet. After the discussion it is time for a cheers and off we go into the night. Back again on Tuesday!

We are fortunate to work with so many talented artists to create new environments each season here at noma. For Ocean Season this year, we collaborated with local artist Julie Lænkholm to create this beautiful work, Nés sous la même étoile (2023).

Two years ago, we reached out to our coffee roaster @timwendelboe with a challenge: to devise a new brewing method for our service. Up until then, we had been serving both V60 and espresso and, whilst we were happy with the coffee we were serving, we knew that there was a way to make it more consistent and delicious for our guests.

Aceto Vongole, Non Vongole