A Danish treat close to home

Australia's favourite food blogger, Not Quite Nigella, aka Lorraine Elliott, joins Matt Moran and Princess Mary in a celebration of Danish cuisine with Bocuse D'Or winner Rasmus Kofoed.

Currently Denmark has the World's Best Restaurant (Noma) and the World's Best Chef (Rasmus Kofoed). It also has more Michelin stars than many other European capital cities. So how did this compact country with a population of just over 5.5 million become the latest culinary superstar? Part of the reason is right before me.

Rasmus Kofoed, Danish chef and current holder of the Bocuse d'Or title for World's Best Chef, has been flown over from Denmark to cook for Princess Mary and Prince Frederick at an exclusive dinner at Sydney's Doltone House. For now, he is relaxing and walking around the vegetable garden near the 1832 heritage homestead which was once visited by Charles Darwin. During the height of summer almost 90 per cent of the vegetables that they use on the premises will come from the gardens here.

What is interesting is seeing our produce through an outsider's eyes. Rasmus tells me that they tend to treat ingredients differently in Denmark.

Case in point is the strawberry. "Have you tried green strawberries?” he asks. In Denmark, they now eat green strawberries – that is, strawberries just before they turn red – with a starter or with fish to give the dish a good acidity. Rasmus says that there is still sweetness to it but it has a different flavour to the red strawberry. And in the stores you now can buy punnets of green strawberries…

Emirates Airlines is currently in talks with Rasmus to provide food for in-flight business and first class meals as well as for the business and first class lounges now that there are direct flights from Australia to Copenhagen. They will all be done in the style of the food in his restaurant Geranium.

We try two dishes – the chips made from potato starch, which are gossamer thin and crunchy and melt in your mouth and are served with a seaweed and yoghurt mayonnaise (suddenly, and quite tragically, chips and dip will never be the same). He wanted to bring over some ramsons or wild garlic for this dish but customs wouldn't allow it to be brought into the country.

We also try his Greenland spider crab with smoked salmon, pickled cucumber, herbs that he foraged from the Botanical Gardens, sorrel cream with horseradish juice and parsley oil. The dish is clean and with an excellent balance of flavours... To Rasmus, his style of food emphasises freshness. "In a Nordic kitchen it is very important so that you will feel well, not that you want to die or sleep (afterwards).”

On our way back to Sydney I ask him about the food that he serves in his restaurant and he tells us how he steers clear of items like foie gras because of the way the animals are treated and says that he can find flavour in other items. He also likes using many parts of an animal and one item that he cooks is a fish tongue. Large cod often have tongues a couple of inches long and he simply pan-fries the tongue lightly in butter.

A couple of days later I find myself in possession of a coveted media pass at the Sofitel where Rasmus will cook with Princess Mary of Denmark, who is here in Australia to promote Denmark with Rasmus along with Aria's Matt Moran. But Matt is doing a rather good job of promoting Denmark himself, calling it "the hottest country in the world for food” before quickly adding "apart from Sydney.”

Everyone is eager to find out what it is about Denmark that has sparked this food revolution. Apparently the climate is one thing; the cool, pristine weather produces fine ingredients (Lurpak butter, Castello cheese are two items that we see here). Also the hallmarks of modern Danish cuisine are clean, simple flavours – an excellent sense of balance, seasons, and terroir (a sense of time and place with local ingredients). The design is another reason, with international designers like Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl and Hans Wegner. Rasmus believes that the success of some chefs, including Rene Redzepi from Noma, brings about a younger generation of proud Danes that want to advance Danish cuisine.

He explains that his food is simple and tells us that there won't be a lot of colours in a dish as he "wants the flavours and aroma to speak”. And then a special guest arrives. It is Princess Mary who is brought onto the stage to assist...

After helping out Matt Moran for his salad of spanner crab with sauce nero and ginger gel, Princess Mary helps out with dessert, which is Rasmus's course. In some press interviews she speaks with a slight Danish accent but today she speaks with an Australian accent that is so disconcertingly normal that I have to do a double take to ensure that it is her speaking and not someone in the audience. Matt asks her if her hands are clean and she explains that perhaps they may not be as she has been shaking a lot of hands this morning.

Rasmus's dish is a white chocolate dessert which he suggests that we call "Bright Green”. It is an ambrosial concoction with the sweetness of white chocolate balanced with flavours of chervil, freshly squeeze green apples, cucumber and celery granita. "White chocolate loves salt,” Rasmus says, and adds that he sought to create a light dessert as this could be the 15th dish for the diner. It is considered to be his most popular dessert ever. We are lucky enough to taste it and it is divine – a wobbly white chocolate base with a thin, green top layer and again it is the balance of flavours and contrast of textures that makes it.

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