>> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> ♪ No, take me home ♪ Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

♪♪ Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

>> Viestad: If this hits me, I will get a severe frostbite.

It is incredibly cold, but it will burn you.

♪♪ ♪♪ Hi, and welcome to "New Scandinavian Cooking" from Kristiansand Dyrepark in southern Norway.

I'm Andreas Viestad.

This park is one of Norway's most popular family holiday destinations, and this part of the country is also where my family hails from, and in today's program, we'll juggle between the traditional and the modern both when it comes to flavors and cooking techniques, and we'll start off in the part of the park that's called Kardemomme by, or Cardamom Town, where I'll make a cardamom ice cream using liquid nitrogen.

Then I'll go foraging for ramsons, wild garlic, in the local woods.

My ancestors, who were farmers, hated ramson because it's said to taint the milk if the cows ate it, but I think it's absolutely lovely.

I'll use it to make a ramsons puree that will appear in a range of dishes starting with a grilled sandwich with fresh goat cheese.

I'll also pick the first potatoes of summer that I'll use to make a ramson-flavored potato salad.

Finally, I'll make long-cooked pork neck flavored with another part of the woods, the one you see but you don't always think about, namely the trees itself.

I'll smoke the meat with local beech and oak and serve it with grilled celeriac and rhubarb.

In the park, there are animals from all over the world, from the jungle and the savanna, but one of the most unique things is the fauna of Scandinavia.

There are mooses here.

This is Odin.

He's now quite tranquil and kind.

His horns are still growing, but in a couple of months, they will be completely grown.

He will go into his mode as the king of the forest, and he'll be very aggressive all through fall.

In addition to moose, there are owls here.

There are foxes and the leopard of Scandinavia, the lynx.

♪♪ ♪♪ One of the most loved children's stories in Norway is about a fictional town called Cardamom Town.

It's a little bit like Norway, but it's also quite exotic.

There are camels.

They're speaking camels.

There are parrots.

There are burglars who have a lion, and there are old wise men, and this fictional town has been rebuilt here, and it's one of the most popular parts of the park, and I'm going to use it as an inspiration to make my own ice cream, a cardamom ice cream, and I'm so fond of ice cream, but I'm also a bit frustrated by... Why don't people make it themselves?

It's really, really very simple.

This ice cream is just 1 cup, 2 1/2 deciliters, of milk, 2 1/2 deciliters, or 1 cup, of full-fat cream and about 1/2 cup, or a little more than a deciliter, of sugar, and I like to use a mixture of brown sugar and white sugar, of course, cardamom.

I use four cardamom pods.

You can use ground cardamom, but it's much better to use the whole spices rather than to use something that has been ground up somewhere far away a long time ago, so I simply just open the pods like this.

They look a bit like mouse droppings, but I shouldn't say that, but it smells fantastic.

It has that really, really rich, aromatic cardamom smell, and then I'm just heating the mixture until almost boiling, and that way, the flavor from the cardamom is released.

The sugar dissolves, and it's hot enough to thicken the batter when I'm mixing it with eggs afterwards, and to make the ice cream takes just about as long as a really short tram ride.

Now, I pour the hot cream, milk, and cardamom mixture into four egg yolks, shocking the egg yolks.

Now we've got a good ice cream batter, but it's hot, and I need to freeze it, and I need to do it quickly, so in order to do that, I need some assistance, and I need liquid nitrogen.

That is minus 196 degrees Celsius, minus 320 Fahrenheit.

I need protective equipment because if this hits me, I will get a severe frostbite.

It is incredibly cold, but it will burn you, and it is a kind of magic.

After just a few seconds, it starts to thicken, and the good thing is that you get these incredibly small ice crystals, so you get the softest of ice creams.

[ Speaking Norwegian ] >> !Ja!

>> Viestad: [ Speaks Norwegian ] ♪♪ You can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

>> [ Singing in Norwegian ] >> Viestad: Dyreparken is situated on a large patch of land, which is basically just a wild area, about 60 hectares, 150 acres, and you can find lots of edible things, lots of wild plants, so the flora here is quite interesting.

This is wood sorrel, which has kind of sour taste... >> Yeah.

>> ...almost like lemon.

When I was a kid, I used to pick it when I went out hiking, and then I grew up, and I thought, "I'm too big to do that now, you know?

That's for kids," but now I've started rediscovering some of these things as I've become more and more interested in food, and here's another edible resource that Eli, who's a chef at Dyreparken, uses quite a lot of.

This is wild garlic or ramsons.

How much do you use every year?

>> Around 100 kilos.

>> Viestad: Around 100 kilos?

That's 250 pounds of wild garlic.

It's got really interesting garlicky taste.

>> Rounder.

>> Viestad: Yeah, it's rounder, yeah, so I use it in basically anything where I would use garlic.

What do you use it for?

>> I use it for pesto and instead of basil.

I use it for salads and dressings.

>> Viestad: Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: I find that you can sneak it in as a substitute for garlic but also for other aromatic herbs, and it's interesting that it is wild, and it's been here since longer than we have.

So how much time do you think it will take us to pick 100 kilos?

>> A good time.

>> Viestad: Yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ Ramsons, ramps, wild garlic.

It is...the old garlic is the most ancient plant we have.

It was here long before we started cultivating plants, and it's the new garlic.

It is a dish that is in vogue, and it pops up in new restaurant menus and new dishes, but there's one problem with ramsons, and that is that the season is very short.

It's there from early spring until early summer.

By midsummer, it's all gone, so what I do is, I try to conserve it by making a ramson puree.

You simply take the whole leaves and the flowers and everything.

You just chop it into smaller pieces and then puree it with an oil.

I use rapeseed oil or canola oil, and when the first batch of ramsons is fully pureed, I just feed it with more and more because if you add all of it to begin with, it will clog up the system.

And then when I have a nice thick puree like this, look at the fantastic color.

Then I just season with salt to preserve it, about a heaped teaspoon for 1 1/2 cup, or 3 1/2, 4 deciliters, like this.

Mm.

It's delicious.

It's really aromatic and fresh-tasting and with that garlicky bite.

This is one of the most versatile things you can have in your kitchen.

Last year, I made a whole lot.

I made 10 or 12 jars.

I've still got a little bit left, and it still tastes really nice and fresh.

I use it on meats, on fish, sandwiches and in salads and sauces.

Right now, I'm going to use it to make a kind of bruschetta.

Here, I've got some nice crusty bread that I've just grilled, to which I'm adding a generous dose of the puree and a little bit of wild caraway, caraway seeds.

So just a few seeds, but they will be nice sort of taste explosions when I eat them.

Then I've got a really good local goat's cheese from the neighboring county from my friend Boo Janssen, and then simply just decorate with a few ramson flowers like this, and that's it, very simple.

♪♪ Eli tells me that she and her cooks make more than 60,000 hamburgers every year, and I'm going to make my own hamburger with a special twist.

I'm adding some duck meat.

Sometimes, when I've raised my own ducks and slaughtered them, I've found that they have meat all over the place, not just duck legs and duck breast, which is the stuff you find in the store but here and there, and I use the scraps of meat as the magic ingredient either in stews or in hamburgers.

Here, I've got some fatty beef with a fat content between 15 and 20 percent, and then I'm adding pieces of duck meat, I would say between 20 and 30 percent duck meat as well.

And then the trick to making a hamburger is don't overdo it.

Don't work the meat too much.

So I make it into a bowl like this.

The meat should be as cold as possible, so you don't smudge the fat, and then smash it, adding salt and pepper, just seasoning it.

I'm not mixing it into the meat mixture.

And then straight onto the grill.

One of the things that I really hate on a hamburger is Thousand Island dressing.

To be honest, I don't even like ketchup on my hamburger.

I don't like there to be anything very sweet.

I want there to be something a little bit spicy, a little bit pungent, so I'm going to make my own ramson mayonnaise.

Here, I've got homemade mayonnaise.

Here, I've got my wonderful ramson puree and a good dose of really strong mustard, Dijon-style mustard To get it a little bit more fresh-tasting than just with mayonnaise, I'm adding a tablespoon of sour cream as well.

That really has some punch in it, and I like it.

♪♪ Now, that is one generous hamburger.

You can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

Mm.

Sometimes, if you mess too much with a hamburger, if you add something too strange, you sort of lose the point, but here with that subtle flavor of duck, it's just fantastic.

♪♪ ♪♪ Everyone who spends their summers in southern Norway know that the weather here can be unpredictable, as it is in the rest of the country, but the average temperature is just a few degrees higher, and that makes a big difference.

That means that the plants are a little bit earlier.

We're now in Arendal between Grimstad and Kristiansand, still in southern Norway.

This is a famous agricultural area with lots of vegetable production, but it's most famous for its potatoes.

This is where we get the first new potatoes of the season, and when the Arendal potatoes are on the market, the potato feast can start, and we can rediscover our centuries-old love for the humble spuds.

When you have freshly boiled tiny new potatoes, it actually feels like a luxury to burn your tongue.

Mm.

They are a feast in themselves, but I'm going to use them to make a scientific potato salad.

I know a French scientist who did her PhD on potato salad, and she has told me that the secret behind a really good potato salad is to handle the potatoes while they're still hot because they look exactly like they do when they're cold except that I know that they're hot because they're burning, but they also have these open crevices and openings inside that allow flavors to penetrate.

When they cool off, they close off, so you have to do it while they're still a little too hot to handle, and if you also prick them just using something... You can use a fork, or you can use a needle... That will allow more flavor to penetrate into the potatoes.

You can flavor your potato salad with basically anything.

I think it's nice to use different aromatic herbs from the garden.

You can use parsley.

You can use thyme, but right now, I'm going to continue using ramson.

Here I've got a little bit of a ramson oil that's made by a friend of mine, Nikolai, who basically does it the same way that I did my ramson puree, but you just filter it afterwards and use a little bit more oil, and I'm adding a good dose of my ramson puree as well, which is a little bit more coarse, a little bit more pesto-like.

And a little sprinkle of salt, not too much because there's salt in the ramson puree as well.

One teaspoon of malt vinegar.

You can also use white wine vinegar, but don't use balsamic vinegar.

That's just too sweet, And then the point is mix it thoroughly and keep mixing, you know, every 10 minutes or so for the first half hour while the potatoes cool off because that way, they will be covered in the ramson oil and puree, and the flavor will penetrate into the potatoes.

And then finally, I just decorate with a few of these ramson flowers.

That's very nice to have.

If you can't find ramson flowers, you can use any edible flowers because it adds a really nice touch to a potato salad that's otherwise very, very simple.

And I'm going to serve it with the main dish today.

♪♪ ♪♪ The farms in this part of the country in southern Norway were typically small and complex.

On the farm where my grandfather grew up, they had one or two cows.

They had five or six sheep, and in good years, if there was a surplus of food, they would have one pig, so roast ham wasn't something my grandfather ate very often, maybe twice a year because the pig has two legs, but they were meticulous in using every cut of meat and not let anything go to waste, and I'm now going to make a dish using pork neck, which is in some ways a modest cut, but it's one of the most flavorsome.

So what kind of meat do you have here for me today?

>> Oh, here, I have a fantastic pork neck here with bone.

>> Viestad: That's lovely.

Pork neck, that's the neck part of the animal, and that used to be frowned upon and thought of as a lesser cut of meat, but it's actually delicious.

>> It's fantastic because the fat is into the meat all the way.

>> Viestad: Yeah, in some cuts, the fat is on the outside of the meat, but here it's what we call intramuscular fat, and that melts when you cook it.

>> Oh, it's fantastic.

If you only have the fat outside, it's not good.

>> Viestad: No, the meat can be quite dry inside.

But you have to cook it for a long time, and the cooks here are going to help me with that, and they are going to cook it for 12 hours at 65 degrees Celsius.

That's 160 Fahrenheit.

And that way it becomes wonderfully juicy and tender.

>> I love it tender as well.

We do the same from 8 to 12 hours, yes, and it will be fantastic.

♪♪ >> [ Both speaking Norwegian ] >> Viestad: When the meat is cooked like this for a long, long time over relatively low temperature, it becomes wonderfully tender and succulent, but it is rather bland.

No flavors have been added apart from a little bit of salt, and it's more like a boiled piece of meat than a roasted piece of meat.

Here I've got a kettle grill with all the burning embers on one side, and I'm going to flavor the meat now with a flavor of the forest, not the wild herbs or the berries but the forest itself, the trees.

Here on the southern tip of Norway, there are lots of deciduous trees.

There's oak.

There's beech.

There's birch, and I'm going to use all of them, and when you use the smoke from these trees, you get that classic smoky flavor but with spicy hints of vanilla.

Flames start flaring up quite soon.

What you need to do is to suffocate the fire a bit, make sure there's only smoke, no flames, and even after just a few minutes, you can see that the smoke is doing its job.

We've got this lovely dark color, and it smells fantastic.

But when you've got these fatty pieces of meat and with lots of smoke, you need something to balance it with, something a little bit tart, perhaps a little bit angry even.

And nothing is more angry than rhubarb.

Rhubarb is really like the flavor of southern Norway.

In old times, they even used to make wine, rhubarb wine, and that is remembered as having been incredibly delicious.

I'm not sure what we would think about it today.

But one of the things that is unique about rhubarb is that it's so early.

While we have to wait until late summer or even fall to pick our fruits and berries, rhubarb is here with us all along through temperamental Norwegian summer.

And rhubarb in its raw state is just too much of everything.

So I'm going to moderate it a little bit by grilling it.

Just to protect the meat, I'm going to wrap it in one rhubarb leaf, and the rhubarb leaf is just a little bit poisonous, but you'll have to eat a whole lot of rhubarb leaf in order for it to affect your health, so wrapping a piece of meat in it, I don't think that will be a problem, but if you're a bit paranoid, you might consider using aluminum foil instead.

When the rhubarb is a little bit charred on the outside, and some of them are really quite limp, and others are quite firm, that's when you want them.

You want different textures.

And then I'm just chopping them, and I'm going to chop them and use them in a chutney, and to make my simple uncooked chutney, I need a little bit of salt, then a little bit of cinnamon, about 1/4 teaspoon, not more because if you add too much, it's going to taste like Christmas.

Some brown sugar, about 2 teaspoons.

And then a couple of tablespoons of finely chopped onion and a couple of teaspoons of raisins.

You might want to chop them, but I don't really find that that's necessary.

As much chili as you dare.

I'm using one whole dried chili like this.

And then ginger root, and then just finely chop it.

Stir it all together.

Then you don't remove too much of the ginger itself.

Mm.

And it's salty and sweet at the same time.

It's aromatic and spicy, and it's really, really still quite tart, so it's excellent together with pork.

Normally, hot-smoking takes a whole day.

You just have to walk around the grill and just feed it a little bit, and that is quite nice, but it also quite demanding.

Now, I didn't have to do that.

The meat was already cooked, so all I had to do was to give it temperament and flavor.

It's amazing how much just one short hour or so on the grill does to the flavor.

The flavor of the smoke penetrates into the meat as well.

Mm.

I'm serving with a potato salad with ramsons and a good lump of the rhubarb chutney, and here it is.

Remember that you can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

!Hei.

Hei.

♪♪ [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> For more of the "New Scandinavian Cooking" experience, visit our website or Facebook page.

♪♪ >> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> ♪ No, take me home ♪ Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

♪♪ Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

♪♪