Sketches from Cook it Raw: Trees

Rene Redzepi sat at a table surrounded by journalists. Six people were helping him snip the thousands of pine needles necessary to make the oil he was considering using in his dish.


“Spruce,” he corrected. “Spruce oil.”

Redzepi has a relaxed, easy manner, but he’s also eagle-eyed and exacting. Perhaps that’s why his restaurant is number one in the world.

“What are these doing in here?” he asked, pointing to a few flecks of brown in the bowl of green needles.

I ran my fingers through the needles. They were cool and dry, smooth and prickly at the same time. I fished out three of the offending brown ones and wondered how many branches had gone into that bowl.

Earlier that day, Redzepi had collected the tender inner layer of bark from birch trees. He peeled it away in long, circular strips.

“We’re going to do a cold infusion with this,” he said, passing around a sliver of bark. It was supple and sweet smelling, reminiscent of youth.


On the night of the final dinner, Redzepi walked me through the dish he’d prepared together with Claude Bosi and Magnus Nilsson. It was based on the idea of a family dinner, and everyone was to serve himself from the three heavy pots the chefs brought to the table. The dish consisted of white carrots braised until perfectly sweet and tender, flavored with the sap and resin of branches; potatoes wrapped in lichen and buried in salt before baking; and a mushroom and tree bark consommé resonant of the autumn woods.


“What about the spruce oil?” I asked.

“We’re not sure if we’re even going to use it,” he replied.

I like the way that Redzepi tells you exactly what he’s thinking at the time. He’s outspoken and candid, at times egregiously so.

“We’re all of us a bit weird,” he said, pulling apart raw mushroom tops. “You’re a little weird, too.”

The observation caught me off guard.

“You said before that you can’t figure yourself out,” he continued.

Did I say that?

“Have you figured yourself out?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t,” he answered.

In the end, he used the spruce oil.

Sketches from Cook it Raw: Lakes

The fishermen had been out since before dawn. Sober-faced and silently smoking, they shook out their nets, and the fish made a gentle plopping sound as their silver bodies hit the tarp.

The fish were small, only a few inches in length; it took less than a minute to gut them and scoop out their precious orange eggs. Someone had set a pan over a fire by the lake and was grilling them, liberally sprinkled with salt. Kenneth plucked one from the pan and used the back of his knife to lift a tiny fillet from the wire-thin bones.

“Did you used to eat these all the time growing up?” I asked.

“Something like this,” he replied, working methodically, one fish at a time.

He speaks in such a way that each word inhabits discrete aural space.

“So I guess it’s kind of a nostalgic flavor for you?”

“You could say that.”

The fish tasted of clear, fresh water. The bubbly skin was crisp and smoky, the white flesh sweet. As pinpricks of coarse salt hit my palate, I found myself wishing for a glass of autumnal sake -- something broad and tangy like Suehiro Yamahai Junmai Namazume Hiyaoroshi (a natural with fish) -- to wash down these grilled treats. But all we had was thick, black coffee.

Over a hot fire in the kitchen hut, surrounded by seats covered with reindeer pelts, our host Jari Rossi stirred potatoes into a pot of fish soup. Every part of the fish had been used in the dish, from the creamy liver to the turgid beads of roe, but there wasn’t a trace of fishy odor.


Magnus Nilsson had waded knee-deep into the waters. Bent over a patch of reeds, he looked like a rice farmer in a paddy.

"What's he looking for?" I asked. Everyone around me shrugged.

In his left hand he held a bunch of stalks tipped with slender, bamboo-colored roots.

"We can use these," he grinned. "These will be good."

Sketches from Cook it Raw: The Lichen

The lichen that carpets the floor of the Lapland forests is plush and pliant, moist and springy to the touch. It blooms in jade-toned terrestrial clouds, swallowing our footsteps and muting our voices.

The vivid green leaves of Elk lichen resemble the curved horns of the animal for which it is named. They're silky-cool and have a delicate mushroom flavor and almost berry-like piquancy. The spindly, white branches of Reindeer lichen are crunchy and mildly bitter when cooked.

“The ladies know which are good for different dishes,” says our nature guide Tina Ollanke.

“You keep saying, ‘the ladies.’ Do only women do this work?” I ask.

“Pretty much,” she answers. “The men take care of the hunting and fishing, and the women forage.”

“That’s awfully traditional,” I remark, sounding thoroughly North American.

“It is,” she says. “We used to think it’s so old-fashioned, but now that my friends and I are getting older, we like to go to the woods on the weekends, stay in a cabin with some wine…”

“And you forage?”

“Yes, it’s fun.” She leads us to a patch where the Elk lichen and Reindeer lichen grow side by side.


After about half an hour of picking berries and mushrooms, sticking my fingers in the dirt and pulling lichen, I start to get her point. It’s almost like a game.

Daniel Patterson hands me a leaf of Elk lichen and says, “Here, taste this. It’s phenomenal stuff.”

I respond with a questioning look that says, “Is this okay to eat raw?” and warily place a piece on my tongue.

Why hadn’t I ever eaten this before?

In truth, I’d never thought of it as food for humans. I’d known that lichen was a plant-like organism, an abundant hybrid occupying the nebulous space between fungus and algae. I’d heard that it had been eaten in Japan during times of famine, but I never dreamed it could be used to create dishes as magical and innovative as the ones I experienced at Cook it Raw last week.

Yoshihiro Narisawa used different varieties of it in a poetic reconstruction of the forest floor. Claude Bosi wrapped swathes of it around baby potatoes before baking to infuse them with smoky, organic umami. Petter Nilsson and Inaki Aizpitarte fried it quickly in butter to finish their dish of smoked white fish and beet topped with consommé and berries. It was the final note that brought further harmony to an already harmonious composition.

The lichen was here, there, everywhere -- and it was delicious.

What an amazing experience. Sorry for the long silence, but I’ll be posting more of my thoughts and recollections of Cook it Raw this week and next week.