How to Plan a Dinner Worthy of a Nobel Prize

Each year after the Nobel Prize is awarded, the invited attendees progress to one of the world's most exclusive banquets. Among the guests are some of the world's greatest minds and most influential leaders. Former guests have included Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie among others.

So how does one prepare a celebration for diners such as these? With care and insight as explained by Chef Fredrik Eriksson:

Culinary expert, Fredrik Eriksson, works behind the scenes to uphold Nobel's high standards and add Nordic flare to the exacting standards of the banquet help for this years' prize winners. The stakes are high in creating Sweden's biggest night.

And what are the results of all those months on planning? Here is the feast as served this past year on December 10th:

Guinea hen mosaic, carrot variation with Gotland truffle,
and chanterelle duxelle with truffle mayonnaise

Turbot cupola stuffed with Norwegian lobster,
tartelette with lobster on a bed of cream cheese and spinach,
pointed cabbage terrine, lobster sauce and almond potato purée

Chocolate silhouette with nougat and sea buckthorn explosion

Coffee & Grönstedts VO

Facile Punsch & Stenkulla Brunn Mineral Water

(Crafted by the Restaurant Stadshuskallaren staff in collaboration with Chefs Andreas Hedlund and Fredrik Björlin as well as Pastry Chefs Ted Johansson and Conrad Tyrsén)

Yet as everyone knows, no feast is complete without fine wines. One in particular, the Château l’Hospitalet La Reserve Rouge 2011, is remarkable. Its provenance can be traced back to the Templars, that ancient Order that brought many of the Eastern sciences to the West over a thousand years ago.. What wine could be more appropriate for celebrating the achievements of scientists and peacemakers past and present than this fine wine? 

Truly this is a wine worth collecting for the Ages! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2014

El Somni Is Truly a Culinary Opera Dream Come True

For over a year now the famed Roca Brothers of Spain have been crafting a unique culinary presentation, El Somni, a culinary opera.

Their truly amazing creation is a stunning collaboration of cuisine, form, music and wonder – worthy of the esteemed name, ‘Opera’.

The universality of this 'great work' (for that is what the word ‘opera’ actually means), is reflected in the diversity of the first 12 individuals invited to experience the work.

The premiere guest list included an HIV researcher, a fellow chef, an anthropologist, an actress, a theoretical physicist, a poet, an artist, a film director, a research biologist, a conductor, a food writer and a robotics researcher.

The composition of the work is divided into 12 concepts or courses that wrap the viewing diner in The Dream that is the experience’s title translated.

The courses pay homage to the great French chef François Vatel, who killed himself in 1671 when his concept for a vital banquet that was to be served to the French King Louis XIV was destroyed by the late delivery of fresh fish from the coast.

Such was the temperament of a dedicated artist when art was an expected part of the 'noble' life.

EL SOMNI MENU

• Prelude: Water Nymph (Vegetable soup at low temperature, sprouts, flowers and light)
• The Dream Begins (Moon)
• Space (Foams frost Indian figue) 
• Ophiucus (Electric eel)
• Under the Sea (Shrimps, plankton, and anemones, sea urchins, cockles, seawater, crustaceans)
• Garden of the Hesperides (Anarkia)
• The Courtship (Ying yang Palo Cortado oysters with garlic and white all black)
• The Carnality (Pueblano pigeon breast with mole, grilled strawberries and roses)
• Apple/Brittle (Golden apple)
• War (Royal hare roial with blood orange and beet)
• Mercy/Death (Parmentier potatoes with purple bone marrow,caviar, purple flowers and incense smoke)
• Glory (Dessert mass mother, mother dough ice cream)
• Awakening (Sweet spring)

Yet the wonder of the evening does not rest solely on the event's innovation cuisine. Expanding on the talents developed in the three brothers’ world famous restaurant,El Celler de Can Roca, these three creative chefs also collaborated with a diverse group of visual artists, includingFranc Aleu, Daniel Molina, Pere Grife,andPeret, to create an experience that defies the limits of culinary classification.

After its initial premiere in Barcelona, this unique work will be hosted at 12 different locations around the world, followed by a documentary book, exhibit and finallya filmby Mediapro.

If possible, do all you can to attend.  Like listening to great opera performed well for the first time, afterwards you will never view the world in quite that same way as before. And that is, truly, the definition of great art. 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013