Hot Dinners is full of the festive spirit following a party over at the Danish embassy last night where cookery writer Trine Hahnemann presided over a splendid spread for the Ambassador’s Nordic Yule do. (We'll forbear from any mention of Ferrero Rocher, we swear!)
‘Nordic cooking has changed completely over the last 20 years,’ she told us, before plying us with canapés including cubes of slow-cooked pork, topped with Brussels sprouts and red cabbage and tiny teacups of hot apple sauce studded with Danish bacon.
Trina herself is based in Copenhagen but seems to spend a huge amount of her time in London, perhaps because her sister Silla owns the restaurant chain Feng Sushi – ‘I love sushi but at Feng Sushi it also has a little Scandinavian touch, which is very interesting.’
Asked where she’d eaten out in London recently, Hahnemann was full of praise for Les Deux Salons where she’d had lunch this week. ‘I had a potato and kale soup that tasted wonderful.’
‘I also enjoyed Koffmann’s,’ she told us. ‘that was great and I go a lot to the British restaurants, like St John’s and Mark Hix. I find it very interesting to see how the British chefs use the same ingredients as us so differently.’
If you’re thinking of heading over to Copenhagen anytime soon and can’t get a table at World’s Best Restuaraunt(TM) Noma, Hahnemann had a good recommendation to make – she suggests Kødbyens Fiskebar which is located in the old meat packing district which is owned by a former Noma chef. ‘There’s a restaurant revolution in Copenhagen – Noma is at the head of a train which is a fast, but good one...'
