01/10/2025
After many days of testing, failing, learning, lots and lots of dishwashing and getting sticky mochi dough and gyouza wrapper dough off of everything from the kitchen wall to inside my pockets, many many many forest walks, the menu is ready now.
Really looking forward to the day I get to finally make it, and to enjoy the process as a shared experience with four other people.
Themes: Japanese home-food, 秋分 , Autumn Equinox, Minimising food miles and Food Waste, Local Ingredients
MENU
HOKKAIDO PUMPKIN NIMONO
locally sourced pumpkin simmered in dashi from foraged porcini and kelp from the fjord
GYOUZA DUMPLINGS
homemade wrappers with Danish flour. Filling made from locally grown cabbage, foraged bolete mushrooms, ground meat from local free range farm
TAKIKOMI GOHAN
Japanese one pot rice with chestnuts, foraged mushrooms and carrots from local producer topped with camelina seeds from Morsø agricultural school
MIRABELLE UMEBOSHI
Homemade mirabelle plums salt-pickled in fermented beet and cherry leaf juice
SWEET MOCHI DAIFUKU
Filled with foraged red hawthorn and Danish Fuego beans
FUKAMUSHI SENCHA INSPIRED GREEN TEA
A blend of foraged mugwort, nettle,
sage and birch leaves dried in the sun.
About:
Could ‘food’ be a way to connect - not only to each other as human beings, but to the more than humans in the web of life? To the plants they grew on, the sunlight they absorbed, the rain that nourished them and the soil that they lived in?
What if food was not a product to consume but an extension of life - a gift - and the act of eating was a way to sustain not only our bodies but our souls and communities, and a source of energy that could be offered and resourced out of us when called upon?
I invite us while we make and taste this food together to invite these seeds of thoughts into our hearts. I ask us to take the time to be present with the food through all of our senses - can you smell the forest floor - moss, the dead leaves, and the little bugs that the mushrooms grew as a living part of? Can you feel the mighty waves that carried the seaweed ashore? Does the food hug you like a warm moment of real sense of safety and community that holds you and allows you to rest through the long cold winter?
Another thing that has stayed a constant presence in the making of this menu from the beginning to the end was being aware of and an effort to minimize food mile and food waste. I have tried to use every part of the ingredients - pumpkin with her skin on, the cabbage whose core was not thrown out. Thus, I invite us also to think of where each ingredient came from, with a sense of gratitude and respect to the food itself and to all the hands, both human and more than human, along the thread, that made it possible for us to enjoy it today.
This menu is a result of the work of many hands and hearts, from time spent with my mother trees, ingredients from the nature on Mors and local farms, friends and family members who shared their wisdom and skills, trusted me throughout the process, and held me through it all.
*please forgive my poor Danish translation of the menu.. that’s still a work in progress demanding a lot of time and work. 😅
