Poland - good food for sports, health and diversity

Agnieszka (30, entrepreneur, company co-owner) and Mariusz (31, entrepreneur, company co-owner)

This young marriage became fans of good food after a course at a well-know Warsaw based Kurt Sheller's cooking Academy, which they participated in back in 2007. They chose to eduacate themselves in cooking after they "sadly" stated that they eat the same dishes every couple of days.

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FOOD LOVING EDUCATION

"We treat cooking and eating good food as sport. You can say we compete with each other, but it is for sure a friendly competition. Its subject would be to surprise each other. It surely brings diversity to our lives and makes our live together less monotonous. On tuesday we ate Tex-Mex style steaks and yesterday we worked together for a perfect neapolitano pasta"

"Cooking and eating is also quite sensual or even erotic, but maybe that's a truism. I really like the fact that it became such an important part of our life. Not only because we indulge in sensual pleasures, but also because we really don't have to think about what to in the eveneings or during the weekends. I would even say that we don't have any spare time anymore - the time we don't spend doing something else, we spend cooking at home".

"When we started cooking we fitrst bought tons of cookbooks by multiple authors from multiple cultures and culinary schools. We really loved, especially that both of us really didn't know anything about cooking and about good ingredients one can use in the kitchen. We were really really green"

"Also our social life was nourished by this change of our culinary patterns and practices and flourished. We started invited friends over for dinner just after we started cooking 'for real'. We all laughed about our fails and always tried dishes that were not exactly perfect, just to discuss improvements to be made. It's funny how fast cooking fun goes semi-professional, at least in terms of attitude"

THE HEALTH ASPECT

"Being diabetic I always had to watch over my diet. My diabetes is not extreme and therefore it didn't real stop me from eating most of the food. But my ignorance in terms of foog chemistry and ingredient chemical composition posed danger to my life a couple of times. Learning cooking and food in general helped me get rid of those threats and dangers".

"We are also deeply convinced that there has been a significant change to our lives after we started to cook and eat consciously. We chose ingredients carefully and in accordance with our individual diet. And the funny thing is that once we started learning cooking and food, a lot of our - both big and small - health problems went away. I guess it must be because of the quality of food we bring into our home".

MY VERY OWN COOKBOOK

"Both of us really love to experiment with recipes and we actually did -- toutes proportiones gardees -- come up with some dishes, mostly by combining some other recipes, that people seem to enjoy much. It real fun, but reaching this requires a lot of patience, as it requires a real lot of attempts and trials".

Agnieszka and Mariusz cooked shrimps for me:

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS: Some food lovers have a sort of discovery-sports attitude. Their social life comes to surprising each other with culinary novelties and leads to creation of individual recipes. They also believe in good food as healthy and like to educate themselves in food in order to know more of the chemical structure of the dishes they consume.

Russia - Natural, Imported or Kid's Food

Boris, 26

[Lives with his flatmate downtown. He has jewish roots, studied Kabbala and follows the respective regulations.]
I grew up with my mom and had to always cook for myself and for my sister. When I was 18 I started living alone. So I have a lot of experience of cooking and understanding the importance of seeking quality in food came to me early.

I prefer to enjoy the taste of food or drinks separately. I never drink and eat at the same time - be it alcohol or juice or water. When you consume it at the same time you can't feel neither the drink's true taste nor the food's.
Alcohol is good as aperitif or digestif.

It's really helpful to know that red wine improves the taste of meat. Or that there is this French drink that improves the taste of almost anything. But you have to drink only before or after the food.

Choosing Food

Again adhering to your preferences is important. Even the worst grocery store will have something to choose from. If it's full of chips and crisps and soda water - you can always find something like a bottle of yogurt of cottage cheese.

I can't eat crisps at all. I am disgusted by the unnaturalness of them. (Nachos are natural and made from corn - I can eat them.)

At work we have few dining options at considerable prices so we cook in the office. We go out and grab vegetables at the kiosk and make okroshka or bring rice and make rolls.

Bad food will make you feel heavy and your head will feel dumb.

Cooking

Cooking to me is always intuitive - I never follow recipes. A recipe is like a mind barrier. It limits you. I think it's our Russian thing - we don't like following prescriptions.

Shopping

I go to the medium-segment supermarkets - Perekrestok, Sedmoi Kontinent. Because again you can find good food in any store.

Mostly what I cook at home is meat and vegetables and rice. So my shopping is quite easy.

You can always tell the bad vegetables from the good ones by smelling and feeling. But I would never buy frozen veg - it's better to have fresh potato and meat than frozen broccoli.

I buy decent meat but never above 400 rubles per kilo (9 pounds). I am very sensitive to price promotions and deals.

When I buy sauces I always look at the content - stuff like modified starch and glutamate in sauces or ketchup are not acceptable to me.

Butter

I consumer butter only with pancakes, red caviar or pasta sauce (the one with cheese). I never even think about margarine.

I try to always buy President - but the one that is made in France. I have been to France 4 times and I remember all the names of the brands, cheeses, bakery and butter. Russian products never taste the same - so I avoid them.

If French President is not available I can try something Finnish, Swedish, or Baltic. They have a reputation of producing good dairy. I am especially interested if they offer a discount. That's when I am willing to experiment.

I don't consume a lot of butter because I try to avoid fat. I have some weight problems.

I fry without oil. Maybe just a drop of sunflower. Olive oil goes in salads.

Deals

Promotions and deals are very interesting. For example I know that any imported beer for 100 rubles (2.3 pounds) is more or less equally good. If a beer from UK is offered at a discount I will definitely choose it.

And again I remember all names and tastes of beer so I will not have some second thoughts.

Spices & Sauces

Like I said I try to avoid spices and sauces because I prefer the real taste of products. I would rather add some sauce in a plate later. Good products are best enjoyed alone.

But if I buy soy sauce or special rice - I will find a wholesale market online and go there and buy a 1.5 litre bottle of sauce for the price of 2 small bottles in the store.

Or seaweed paper and chinese mushrooms:

Going Shopping

Let's go to the nearby Perekrestok. It is a flagman store - they have everything you want there.

Leek is something I need for salads all the time:

[Then Boris picks up a bottle of his favorite discounted wine and fresh carrots.]

When you choose sour cabbage (a Russian traditional food) you have to look at the date of production. It's full of vitamin C and so on.

[At first Boris wanted to buy the usual meat he picks up here. In the fore front of the picture:



But then he noticed sliced meat at the discount:


This is the smaller pack of President made in France. It is more pricey but Boris sees value in it because of flavor and quality


If you look at the back you will see that the pack itself is all in French. Only the sticker is in Russian - the proof that it wasn't produced in Russia.



When Boris noticed salty Lurpak in the small long pack he says he would be interested to try it if it was at a discount. He likes the unusualness of the pack and the new imported brand he never heard of before. See top left corner:


This kind of cheese looks like nothing produced in Russia - the package, the design - so it can be grabbed at once.


Every egg has to be checked for integrity:



Suddenly Boris realizes it might be a good idea to check if the wine is still sold at that attractive price:


He is very concerned with value while shopping. The price is the same.

When we exit the store he explains that he usually chooses water and juice for kids. Because the producers can't compromise the quality on these kind of products plus they are sold at moderate prices.

Opportunity: Lurpak has the obvious option of to communicate its imported dairy quality along with price promotion to drive trial.

Poland - travelling through food

Anna (51, accountant) and Stanisław (51, CEO)

There is a traditional Polish saying that goes "through stomach to the heart" with no meaning no other than the one in English. I have heard it multiple times while interviewing this middle-age couple in their suburbian house, in Konstancin near Warsaw.

SIMPLICITY THROUGH MODESTY

They both love to cook and their economic status allows them to do that quite often, even up to four or five times a week. They invite close friends, neighbours and some family over for dinner. A big isle kitchen with additional maid help makes their cooking quite exquisite but they "try not to show off to much in order not to embarrass their guests too much". This attitude leads to traditional Polish and Mediterranean cuisine with original additives from the hosts.

HOME COOKING AS PART OF QUALITY LIFE

Anna and Robert immersed into cooking after their turbulent but succesful careers. They first sold one company and started a new on focusing on accounting in times of prosperity acceleration, gaining multiple clients in short time. Robert still works as a CEO of in a Polish branch o pharmaceutical company.

Leaving daily work, they tried to calm concentrating everyday pleasures. They travelled, rebuild their house and cooking became a natural consequence of their eating passion realized throughout the globe. They began bringing back flavourings and condiments from their journeys and cooking exotic dishes at home for their friends as a part of the after-journey storytelling meetings.

They soon realized that travelling "was possible by simply preparing local food with local music playing in the back... and respecting local, even if very exotic, table savoir-vivre customs". This led them to health and quality food retailers in Poland that include ALMA and PIOTR I PAWEL supermarkets present i Polish big cities, local exotic food stores like KUCHNIE ŚWIATA and small local stores with "good food".

We cooked chicken in a thai way:

SHOPPING AND BUTTER

This couple does not shop too often - they usually have somebody doing their shopping for them or event order groceries online. They have a template list in one of the online stores based on the ALMA brand and butter is present there. The brand they chose is MASŁO FIŃSKIE (FINNISH BUTTER) whose design and small-scale communication benefits position it very close to Lurpak. Having a list online, they have their favourite brands already chosen.

They usually buy five packs of butter per week and almost never have to buy butter locally in case of an immediate need, as they also usually have a couple of packs deep frozen. Having no kids, they can allow themselves to concentrate on strong and often unacceptable in Poland tastes while chosing their products either online or in real.

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS

Wealthy food lovers often concentrate on the exotic dimension of the food they prepare and treat cooking exotic dishes as either a way of travelling or a way and/or pretext to tell stories about their travels.

Poland - good food as the essence of home

Matylda (31, bartender, DJ) and Bartek (28, PR manager, ethnologist)

MARRYING FOOD

MATYLDA: I can remember the very begining of our relationship a couple of years ago. We went th theatre, we went to cinema and we ate out a lot. And then one they Dawid slept over and I was woken up by a really nice smell coming from the kitchen. As I got up and walk down the corridor, I saw Dawid preparing a very easily breakfast from classical ingredients coming from the shop downstairs. He made scrambled eggs with toasts and tomato salad. As the shop downstairs is not really well equiped, he didn't get olive oil and prepared everything on traditional Polish butter from the countryside they had. It was delicious. I guess things taste and smell better when the situation and/or the context of eating is indulging. I would state that this was the moment we went from a romance to the relationship. It's quite amazing what food can do to your heart. It really works!

DAWID: Oh, come on. It was just breakfast.

MATYLDA: Not exactly, it was both great, which means you can really cook and important because you made breakfast for the both us and we sat down together for a moment before leaving to work.

Matylda is cooking potato pacakes today:

COOKING TOGETHER

As it seems, a young food loving marriage spends at least an hour and a half in kitchen. They cook together, discuss today's and tommorow's menus, experiment and try more and more complicated recipes. From those discussions shoplists are born. Matylda and David take part in shopping together and they obviously enjoy it.

SHOPPING

This young couple choses shopping location on both peer recomendations and in internet discussions. Similarily to other young Exploring subjects, they are deeply immersed into Internet as a source for recipes and information for quality shopping. They often visit multiple weekend vegetable markets spread on the outskirts of Warsaw, taking a car together with some friends and considering it also as a weekend trip or adventure out of the noisy city.

BUTTER

Matylda and David construct long shopping lists but butter is not on that list as well as multiple other products that they buy almost everyday. They don't write down the brand names but seem to be loyal to different brands in different product categories. They purchase butter every couple of days, but use different brands for different occasions. Matylda uses Lurpak for baking and she seems not to acknowledge its usefulness for other purposes, although the choice is rather aim-oriented than than seasonal.

As many other Polish food-loving consumers this couple rejects margarine, stating its unhealthy and discrediting the "whole marketing-based health paranoia that led to margarine's domination" in the spreadable fats segment. They look both at top shelves and the lowest ones, as they seem to reject the middle shelves on a base of a "mainstream" precognition - they look for both downmarket traditional products that were not highly processed and exclusive premium ones coming from big brands.

They don't perceive butters as highly similar - Matylda differentiates tastes ("saltines"), consistency and texture. They keep butter in the fridge as they usually buy more than one pack. During breakfast and serving dishes that some people add butter to (i.e. some recipes for potatoes) they put butter on a special pre-war churn they bought on a Berlin flea market.

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS: For young couples cooking quality food and eating together strenghtens their anyway close and strong bond. People living and cooking together share their knowledge and therefore know a lot about food and its preparation. An opportunity might come from a well executed PR strategy.

Poland - Girlfriend's quality world

Magda (29, doctoral student, social researcher, Center for Contemporary Arts contributor)

GIRLFRIENDS' EVENINGS

My girlfriends and I meet quite often to "discuss life" and and have some good time together. I think it is both of social importance and of, haha, a 'psychoterapeutical' meaning. .During those evenings, as they happen both in the working week and on weekends, we concentrate on quality pleasures and talks. We talk both problems and passions, life situations and fiction. This is accompanied by good music, often a movie from a projector and/or a couple episodes of American TV series like the "Gossip Girl".

Food is very important for those evenings. Each one of us tries to prepare a special novelty tho share with others. IMaybe it actually is a kind of a contest? I don't know, because even if there is some competitive attitude in it, the rivalry cannot be seen at all. I think that what is really important for us is acknowledging our friends, serving them special, hand-made food of really good quality. IT MIGHT BE THAT THIS IS A WAY OF SAYING THANK YOU TO ONE'S FRIENDS. I love my friends and I want to say it in a more sophisticated manner than literary. Maybe that is what cooking and spending good time around food is all about?

SHOPPING

I shop mostly on a local market in Żoliborz, Warsaw. There is a rumour it might be closed very soon which would be probably my own personal drama as I don't really have an additional good food or market around my place and I won't probably drive far just to get quality butter and eggs for my breakfast.

We made breakfast together:

I look for unique and respected ingredients for my kitchen. I would rather choose something 30% expensive but healthy and tasty than try to save my money on food as it is a real source of one's vital strenght and happiness. I am glad that some day, a couple of years ago, I have met somebody that was a real "health-food-freak", who taught me a lot about cooking and ingredients over just an hour of small talk.

So now, when shopping for food, I read etiquettes and sometimes I even google brands and products on my iPhone, which is a direct way of knowin what and when to buy if I'm to prepare something particular.

I hate supermarkets and the whole modern trade. Cutting costs, they completely neglect the quality of food they serve and/or sell. I think people will eventually loose confidence in big brand foodstores and migrate back to local and (even if a bit more expensive) retailers. And the reatailers will then cut prices as they will sell more and will earn not on single items but on scale, just like the modern trade.

FINDINGS AND OPPORTUNITIES:

Polish young females from our target group gather around cooking and eating for their quality evenings. They neglect modern trade and they often talk about the quality and taste of the ingredients used - modern supermarkets and foodstores are despised and disregarded.

Therefore there might be an opportunity in communicating on site in quality food vendors' places and on local (traditional = healthy) markets with modern retail distribution following.

Poland - quality food for quality friends

Norbert (25, club owner, entepreneur)

Norbert cooked lobsters for me and his friends:

LIFE IN THE NINETIES

I was raised under rather affluent circumstances. Both of my parents developed entrepreneurial skills quite early in the 1990's. Given the Polish economic turbulences, my family was considered rich and living in wealth. We therefore had access and ability to eat (in and out) really well and access and ability to buy better, even premium products.

My family enriched fast and we therefore quite fast found time for quality time with the closest relatives. Cooking and dining for long together became a quite common activity in my parents' home partially because my parents felt a need to share their relative wealth with our relatives and friends.

Both my mother and father found pleasure in cooking at home and serving food to others which was widely accepted and acknowledged. I took part in this custom from the very begining, even though I was really small when it started. This is where my love for food, especially good food, and gathering with people around it came from. Even now, when I'm adult and f

THE TABLE

I think that good food comes together with close bonds with people and sharing. Poland - same as Russia, I think - and it's culture are deeply immersed in traditional hospitality and hosting others. My family, grandparents and parents, raised me in that attitude and I guess I follow their steps in that sense.

FOREIGN FOOD

One can easily see that the Polish hospitality does not mean that the table has to be covered with traditional Polish cuisine. The plates are more and more European and even Asian or African. A ciulinary tradition that is visibly neglected is American, for it is considered as fat and unhealthy. Nevertheless, Polish cuisine is currently subject to renewal and one can even say that there is a hype for fine-tunned Polish recipes, especially when it comes to religious holidays (Christmas, Easter).

EATING OUT

I often eat out as I don't have time to cook and invite friends on daily basis. Being a huge fan of quality food and table, I often ask cooks for recipes or even photograph (if not 'steal') restaurants' menus.

OPPORTUNITY: Communication through quality restaurants's menus.

RECIPES

I find much pleasure in cooking seafood as it both tastes great and impresses my guests. The process of cooking seafood (like lobsters) is also a very beatiful and clean one. I invite my guests to participate in it and as they take part, they indulge in the freedom and pleasure of cooking.

Cooking together seems to be an important part of the "good life through good food" culture. Dining with friends at one's home is apparently not only about serving food but also about bonding through participation in the cooking process.

OPPORTUNITY: Communicate the pleasure and happiness of cooking together with close friends and relatives.

FINDINGS: Food loving is not only about taste and other sensual impressions, it sometimes comes to bonding and spending quality time with close friends and relatives. There might be an opportunity to focus somehow on a strategy close to "the best food for the best peers" or event "some of you deserve the best"

Russia - I Want to Frequent a Store on the Corner

Misha, 28, single, lives alone.

Soviet Background

At the age of 17 I discovered I had a gastritis. I had to abruptly stop eating smoked, hot or fried food. Now it is not so severe and I can manage to break some rules but as soon as I feel nauseated I know I have to stop eating or drinking something.

If I go back further in my childhood I remember that when in the early 1980s my dad started bringing new unknown food from abroad. First yogurt really shocked me. In the Soviet union we had only kefir and ryazhenka. That's what I was used to. I guess I am pretty conservative.

Conservative

I remember I saw the Century eggs for the first time in 1992 and I had none of it. It takes unusual circumstances to get me to change my habits. 2 years ago we went to Bali with friends. All the food was unknown and it was a nightmare to me. But I had no choice. Everybody had no choice. We ate only at that very local place, where the food is not adapted for Europeans. Only local - rice, seafood, chicken, noodles.

So everyone ended up hooked up on the Asian food and we started looking for something similar in Moscow.

Looking for Asian food

We found a Japanese supermarket in Moscow. When we go there with friends we buy lots of funny, weird, unknown stuff. We buy all we see like crazy and then it stays in the shelves for months because it's so weird.

Parties with friends

We do regular out-of-town parties. Girls cook at home salads and stuff and bring it with them. Boys choose meat or fish if it's a barbecue. When you prepare meat it is important to preserve the meat taste. You have to know how to make a marinade to preserve it. Wine is one option. But mostly we try to avoid lots of spices of herbs on meat.

Secondly, cutting is also very important. Because meat has a structure and cutting can help or spoil it in terms of softness.

Choosing food

For meat we go to the open market to one man (vendor) we know. We know him and trust him. Everyone who cares about the stuff he eats has to find one by trial and error.

Spices we choose from the people who cook meat regularly and know how to make a marinade and all that. When people know a lot about spices they deserve my highest respect.

For example at the Crimea we found this lady who asked us "What kind of a fish do you have? How do you want it? How do you plan to cook it?" and then she mixed some spices for us right on the spot. The fish was marvelous.

It is obvious that vegetables form the tent in the street smell like vegetables unlike the ones from the store.

Plus I have this friend who is a real guru. We go to Dorogomilovsky market with him [it is a well known market with quality food]. From him I learned that cooking is a "harsh" art. You have to understand how flavors work vs. knowing the recipes.

Butter

Now that I have learned to manage my gastritis I can fry meat and vegetables on oil (not olive). This is my most common dish cooked at home. I wish I had someone to cook for, but I am single. I have lots of friends but most parties take out of town or other places.

One pack of butter can last in my fridge for 2 months. I usually buy Valio or Vologodskoye. I know that there are different producers of Vologodskoye but mine is the color I remember. I choose it by the color.

I do not trust butter from open markets. When it's unpacked it is suspicious.

I guess butter is not the crucial product for that's why I am not too concerned. That is why I wouldn't care about deals in stores as well. Saving 10 rubles is not too interesting.

Trash Tradition

In summer we go on small hiking getaways with tents and stuff. We bring all the crazy canned food. Like sprat in tomato sauce. All kinds of cheap junk food that goes well only with vodka.

Organics

I am not too concerned. I know one girl who is crazy about it so I hear about it all the time. But I am not seeking it everywhere.

Good Food

My motto is Eat Products with Taste. If it tastes good it is good for you. That's why I will never go to MacDonald's.

But in Moscow even this rule is hard to follow. Restos are a disaster here. You have to keep a list. Meat is good here, fish is good there. There is no one place where all is equally good.

In France you go to any bakery and everything is mouth watering. In Moscow even in expensive bakeries what you get is hired people who don't care about you.

What we need is stores and restaurants where you know the owner. He is your neighbor or someone you got to know. This person will remember you and your habits and you will trust him.

We call it "Let's drive out to eat". You can never find a good place nearby. And it's true for everything in Moscow - everything you do you have to hunt it down across the city.

Shopping

Shopping is also a feat in Moscow. You have to hunt high and low to find stuff you want. So most of the times I am too lazy to drive and just go to the local stores. I guess I am pretty utilitarian in my approach to food.

Observation: People are tired of living in big cities (where you have to spend lots of effort to find sophisticated items), shopping in big supermarkets and chains (where hired people treat you like an object).

Opportunity: Provide more soulful, humane approach to your customers.

Xploring results from Denmark - Sabrina Speiermann

Sabrina Speiermann

(Communication Researcher. Food lover. Famous for making everything from scratch. Loves Mexican and Italian food. Often throws dinner parties with delicious food and good wine. She and her husband share a passion for good food. Imports her own oil, wine and balsamic vinegar from Italy).

Sabrina
”I come from a home with no cooking tradition whatsoever. It was this place where you fried in margarine and left it on the pan for next time you cooked. I thought that was so disgusting. So the moment I moved away from home, I used the opportunity to completely change culinary style.” Sabrina is explaining to me about her food habits as we are shopping in the Danish supermarket Føtex.

Shopping Routines
“I come here every Monday and do the shopping for the whole week”, she explains. “On my way here, I decide which meals we’ll have. Generally it’s the same, like, 14 meals we alternate between. It’s like that when you have kids. It just has to work!”

Sabrina takes me through the supermarket, showing me how a Monday shopping session looks. She picks what she needs as we walk down the various aisles. Certain things are always part of her shopping. Milk, for instance. And rye bread, and oats, and minced meat. And Tex Mex ingredients, like Santa Maria taco sauce. “Oh, this is very revealing, isn’t it?”, she smiles, making an implicit excuse for her love of Mexican food. “But we just LOVE that stuff”. She only buys the Santa Maria brand, because no other brand is as tasty. We reach the dairy section, and she takes me to the parmesan cheese, holding up the classical triangular cheese. “One of these each week!”, she says. “We’re addicted!”

In the vegetable section she reaches for the organic carrots. “We eat these every day. I cut them in sticks and put them on the dinner table. The kids love them and it’s a good way to make them eat some vegetables.” Sabrina always buys organic carrots, because they taste better, she feels. The Monday shopping also involves cucumbers. “For the kids”, she says. “But here I just go for the Danish ones – not the organic ones. Really, I only buy organic if I feel that it makes a difference in taste. Taste is the number one”.

Good food is food prepared from scratch
“You’re talking to a woman who used to make her own peeled tomatoes!”, she says. “None of that canned stuff”. She smiles and winks. ”I truly believe that the best food is the one prepared from scratch. Although my motto is: Prepare it yourself, unless the alternative is better”. She shows me a small pack of flour and seasoning for Danish meat balls. “I buy this instead of adding the flour and seasoning myself. Because they always turn out great and get the perfect consistency. It’s simply better than my own homemade meat balls.”

“I also bake my own bread. I’m proud of my bread”, she smiles.

And then the kids arrived…
“Well, the homemade peeled tomatoes are history”, she sighs. “That was before I had kids. Now it just has to work. Everyday food is practical food. Food Loving is when we have guests. There’s a big difference between our daily meals and our dinner party meals.”, she explains. Before they had children, they would often cook elaborate meals for each other and peruse the special shops for the best ingredients. Now she shop in a place where she can get everything she needs at once. “Previously, we might decide some Thursday evening that we wanted blinis with lumpfish roe, and then we’d go to the shops and find the ingredients. Today it’s spaghetti Bolognese, meat balls, tex mex, and pita bread with falafel.”

A miminum standard maintained
“Even though times are pretty pathetic for food loving after we got kids, we try to keep a minimum standard. I bake my own bread, and we have our own olive oil, balsamico and wine imported from Italy. Plus we always use “Læsø Salt” – that’s kind of our trade mark.” Læsø Salt is a high quality sea salt produced on the Danish island of Bornholm.
“Whenever we have guests, I serve my homemade bread and our Italian olive oil. That’s just a mandatory part of the meal.”
Sabrina also insists on taking the time to buy good coffee and grind the beans herself. “This is just something you have to find the time for!”, she says. Another of her trademarks is to always serve the very expensive chocolate made by the exclusive Danish chocolatier Peter Beier. “His chocolate is just divine”, she says with a half dreamy, half guilt-ridden smile.

Butter
“I ALWAYS buy Lurpak”, she says with a firm voice. ”It just tastes the best.” There is obviously no discussion about Sabrina’s preferences in butter. She is even famous among her friends for being such a die-hard Lurpak consumer. She doesn’t buy the organic version, because it grows stale too quickly, she feels. It takes a long time for her family to consume a pack of butter, and she finds that the organic butter tastes bad after one week in the fridge. “Look, you can tell how it has this yellow color.” She gently flips open a pack and shows me the color.
She would never buy garlic butter or parsley butter. The idea of putting a giant lump of butter into your baked potato grosses her out. She only uses butter for baking and for putting on bread in the weekend. During the week days no butter is allowed on bread out of a concern with calories and weight. For cooking she uses olive oil exclusively.
“On special occasions, I buy the Lurpak butter with Læsø Salt. I told you that Læsø Salt is kind of our trade mark”, she smiles. On a daily basis she doesn’t buy the Læsø Salt version because it’s too salty.

She would never dream of buying spreadable butter. “It’s not butter!”, she exclaims. Once, she tried the Lurpak version, and she was very disappointed. “I guess I thought it was still real butter. I mean, I guess I didn’t think that Lurpak would sink to deep as to sell spreadable butter. They also put that product on the market very late compared to the other producers. It tasted horrible. It wasn’t butter. It didn’t have that Lurpak taste. I like the fact that it comes in this hard box, because the paper easily tears and is difficult to handle. But I can live with that.”
Sabrina also vehemently objects to the use of margarine. “It’s simply disgusting”, she says, and reminds me of the frying pan with old, stale margarine in her family home. “I just swore to get away from that”, she says.
As we pay at the counter, she tells me that tonight’s menu is Spaghetti Bolognese. It’s one of my favorite meals – given that I’ve prepared it myself”, she smiles a little apologetically. “Don’t you know how sometimes a meal just has to taste a very specific way to be right?” I nod. “Well, I make a mean SpagBol”, she grins.

This is Sabrina’s recipe for her other favorite meal: Young cock on root vegetables
The cock is rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper. Placed on a bottom of roughly chopped root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, parsnips, parsley roots, Jerusalem artichokes). Roasted for 45 minutes in the oven at 200 degree celcius. Add ¼ litre of cream (13%). Let it roast for another 10 minutes, then take it out.Serve with beet salad (fresh grated red beets with pine nuts) and green salad with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, avocado, pine nuts and parmesan. Plus (obviously) homemade bread and Italian oli

Xploring results from Denmark - Rasmus Johnsen

Rasmus Johnsen

(Philosopher and teacher. Former chef. Food lover. Spends on average 2 hours every day cooking. Cooks often food for larger events).

Rasmus
We meet in front of Irma, one of Denmark’s fairly expensive and exclusive supermarkets. “I shop here because of the atmosphere”, Rasmus explains. “I dislike being treated like garbage down in Netto”, he says, referring to the very popular discount supermarket. In the fruit section he goes straight to the citrus shelves and picks a number of large grapefruits. “Not ecological?”, I ask. Rasmus takes me to the ecological shelves and shows me the grapefruits there. They are small, wrinkly and with brown marks. “That’s just not appetizing”, he says.

Taste, Smell and Freshness
When Rasmus shops he goes after taste, smell and freshness. Organic is not vital unless it makes a difference for the taste. In dairy products and in certain vegetables he can really taste the difference, but otherwise he gives priority to freshness and fragrance.

We continue in the vegetable department. In front of a shelf with tomatoes, Rasmus stops short. He has already picked a pack of tomatoes, but on this shelf the plum tomatoes are on sale. He returns the other pack and takes the plum tomatoes instead. “They’re cheaper, and they smell better”, he explains. Price matters to him. “Buying stuff on sale in Irma is the perfect package: cheap and good quality in one go!”.

Making other people happy
He peruses through the supermarket, allowing himself to be inspired. “When I shop, I like to think about what would make others happy. I live with two friends, and I know that Martin loves peanut butter – the organic crunchy one. So I should remember to buy that”. The social aspect of cooking is at least half the pleasure, according to Rasmus. When Rasmus cooks, he likes to cook for others.

Dropping meat
Recently, he decided to quit meat. He felt that his cooking had simply become too boring, because it always revolved around the meat. As a challenge to himself and his cooking dedication, he decided to become a vegetarian. It brought back the slow, focused cooking in his life. Obviously, there were other aspects of this choice too, e.g. animal welfare and health. “I just feel so much better after I dropped the meat”, he says. Dropping meat also spared him the eternal conflicts at the supermarket when he had to decide whether to buy the ecological and politically correct eco-chicken at an exorbitant price or just go for the cheap regular chicken. “I’m free from these conscience issues now as a vegetarian”, he says.

Making yourself happy
Usually Rasmus will spend 3-4 hours on preparing a meal. He loves that feeling of entering a meditative mode in the kitchen. It’s a way of showing care for yourself. Of feeling life. Of being in the moment. That’s also part of the reason why he stopped eating meat. “I just felt like the lost bird on capitalism’s big tree – being force-fed industrial meet produced under gruelling circumstances. This whole machinery surrounding the industrial production of meat is just too far out. I didn’t feel good about myself being part of that.”

Simple food is good food
Rasmus likes to make good simple food. He used to work as a cook for several years, so it is not out of lacking skills that he does not make fine French cooking. He just prefers simple food which focuses on fresh ingredients from the season. “Asian food is great, because it’s simple and in small portions. Really yummie.”

Inspiration
Rasmus likes to spend time flipping through his cookbooks or surfing food blogs on the net to find inspiration. Often, he can just sit around fantasizing about different combinations of taste or ingredients for some future meal. Tonight, he is making Vietnamese fresh spring rolls. They are great for when you have many guests, and they will be 15 this evening.

Butter
“I like butter!”, Rasmus says. “I always have it in the fridge.” He has stopped using it under cold cuts and spreads out of concern for his weight. Instead he uses it as a spread of its own occasionally. “It has to be salted and organic – that’s definitively the tastiest choice!”, he explains. Otherwise, he uses it for baking and cooking. Generally he fries with oil, but he likes to add butter to stuff he prepares in the oven. Rasmus’ roommate enters as we’re discussing butter. “Do you ever fry meat with butter?”, he asks her. “Sure – I prefer frying it with butter!”, she responds, a little surprised. Rasmus is bemused. “That’s so weird. I’d never fry meat with butter. Oil is much better suited for that.”

Dietitian
Rasmus attends a dietitian once in a while. Originally it was a weight issue, but now it’s more a desire to know what is actually healthy and what isn’t. “You’re just filled with so much messy information that it’s hard to figure out what’s actually good for you and what isn’t”, he says. Since becoming a vegetarian, the need to know about proteins and vitamins has become bigger for him. And in general he would just like to get out of the dark when it comes to knowledge about health and food. So currently the dietitian has put him on a fairly restrictive regime which means that he gets to eat much less cheese than he’d prefer.

Always in stock
There are certain things which just have to be available at home at all times. Lots of fruit for instance. Apples, pears, oranges, grapes and kiwis. And basic vegetables like carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes. “We also have to have some candy in the cabinet. Everybody always says that they don’t eat it. But whenever there’s something in the house, it’s eaten pronto. So I just make sure that we have some, because really – it makes everybody happy.” When we were shopping in Irma, Rasmus picked a high-quality dark chocolate and a bag of mixed candy on sale. 50% reduction. “We cannot resist that, now can we?”, he smiles.

Xploring results from Denmark - Philip Thomsen

Philip Thomsen
(Works as a journalist. Food lover. Has been cooking for 20 years. Major consumer of cookbooks, food programs and food blogs online. Often includes large dinners with haute cuisine).

Philip
Originally, the plan had been to make roast pork for himself and his friend Gustav tonight. But Gustav got sick, so now Philip is just doing his regular shopping. Whenever he and Gustav are together, Gustav requests the roast pork which is Philip’s piece de la resistance. “We make sure to eat it whenever the girlfriends are not around, because they have this weird reluctance to eat pork”, Philip explains. “They think pork is unclean meat, which is pretty irrational. In fact, pork is very healthy.”
The pork for this dish must be bought at the organic butcher downtown, Philip explains. It’s the best place for good organic meat, even if it’s harrowingly expensive. It’s a half hour drive from Philip’s house to the butcher, but he would never dream of buying the meat elsewhere.

The cookbook
We’re meeting to shop together at the mall. It has a very well-assorted high quality supermarket which Philip uses for shopping. When I meet him, he looks extraordinarily pleased. He pulls a book out of his plastic bag. “Check this out!”, he exclaims. “I’ve been trying to get my hands on this cookbook for years!” He shows me a thick cookbook called “The Silver Spoon”. It contains recipes from some of the famous Michelin cooks in Denmark, and the book has recently been reprinted after being sold out for ages. I display befitting admiration of the book, and then we enter the supermarket.

Shopping at the supermarket
When in the supermarket, Philip peruses through the aisles. There are a number of specific products he wants to buy, but otherwise he lets himself be inspired as we move along. He doesn’t have a shopping list. “I love this supermarket because it has an amazing selection. It’s really well-stocked”, he explains. He takes me to the aisle with the wines. “Look at this!”, he points to the small posters hanging above the wines. “They give you lots of information about the wine, and then they display the reviews which the wine received. I think that’s really cool”, he says. Philip drinks wine frequently, and at weekends he’s happy to spend 15-20 £ on a good bottle of wine. “When I shop food, I really don’t think about the price”, he says, “I go for the good stuff”.

















Organic
We arrive at the vegetables. Philip shows me the onions, carrots, cabbage and leeks he’ll buy. He always goes for organic if it’s available. To him organic equals quality and health. In the fruit department he picks only organic too, even though it is very pricy compared to the regular fruit. He tells me that the same thing goes for meat. Not only is it healthier, but it also puts his mind at ease about possible animal welfare issues. His eggs are from free range hens too.
Philip loves fruit. He always has a large batch of apples, oranges, bananas, pears and kiwis lying around at home. Organic and fresh.
When buying vegetables, he goes for the ones in season. “Freshness is really important in good food”, he explains.

Taste above health
We arrive at the cold cuts and spreads. He shows me his favorite liver pate – an organic brand. I notice that he doesn’t pick the low fat one from the same brand. “It doesn’t taste as good”, he says. “I don’t care about the fat percentage, I care about the taste. And fat tastes good!”
The same thing goes for his choice of cheese. The low fat cheese is not his style. He has a favorite cheese from the brand Thise, which he spends a long time trying to find on the dairy shelves. It’s not there. “We have to go to the cheese shop then”, he says. “I have to get that cheese.” Philip learned about this cheese in a restaurant review which mentioned it. Since then he always has it in the house – along with 4-5 other cheeses of different types and tastes. He’s a bit of a cheese fiend.














Where to shop
Philip has two favorite supermarkets where he gets his basic shopping items. Apart from that he uses a number of special shops: the organic butcher downtown, his local butcher, his local vegetable shop, his local cheese shop, his local fish shop, his local bakery, and a number of ethnic shops for special ingredients. He would never just buy everything in the supermarket. He goes to the place where he can get the best, and he is happy to spend that extra time and money. For steaks he always uses his local butcher. One steak costs 10£ which is pretty exorbitant. But he never buys it anywhere else. “You wouldn’t believe how fantastic that meat is!”, he says.

Butter
Philip grins when I ask him about butter. “Don’t you know that they call me the King of Butter? I LOVE butter. I use butter in everything: baking, frying, roasting, cooking and on bread.” He loves to eat a good piece of bread with a thick layer of butter and nothing else. That’s a truly divine taste, he claims. His favorite brand is Thise, but he’ll go for the Lurpak too. He always buys ecological salted butter except for when he makes gravy. Then he uses unsalted butter. Generally, he buys one pack of butter a week, but occasionally he buys two. “I eat a lot of butter!”, he grins.

















“Butter should be kept in the fridge”, he explains. He just keeps it in the paper wrapping even if it’s not very practical and easily tears. Every once in a while he might buy a spreadable butter for some bread, but as a rule he feels that butter should be real butter – not some substitute product. Obviously, butter is also a component in Philip’s specialty, roast pork. It’s a pretty elaborate meal:

Philip’s Recipe for Roast Pork
Roast pork:
Start by boiling the cracklings, facing downwards in a roasting-pan for 20 minutes (put boiling water in the pan). After this, rub a large amount of salt on the cracklings and stick laurel leaves in between them. After this the roast goes into the oven. The time depends on the size of the roast. Most importantly, the cracklings must be placed completely horizontally; otherwise they will not get crunchy.

Red cabbage:
You need 2 kg of red cabbage, finely chopped; butter, 2 ½ dl of sweet red currant juice; 1 dl red wine vinegar; 4 tablespoons of muscovado; 2 red food apples.
Lightly fry the red cabbage in butter for approximately five minutes. Add the red currant juice, the red wine vinegar and the muscovado and thoroughly stir. Put on lid an let boil lightly for approximately 20 minutes. Finely dice the apples. Add them to the cabbage after 20 minutes of boiling and then let boil lightly for another 10-15 minutes under a lid.

Sauce:
Use a good veal stock made with onions and carrots plus juice from the pork roast and 3-4 dl water. After a while, add a tablespoon of Blue Castello cheese and a tablespoon of red currant gel. Then add ¼ liter heavy cream plus salt, pepper and sauce color. End up by adding some corn flour to reach the right consistency.

Serve all this with boiled potatoes and chips

Xporing results from Denmark - Jesper Stein Larsen

Jesper Stein Larsen

(Journalist and food reviewer Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. Food lover. Cooks much of his food himself. Holds all of the cookbooks published. Reviews restaurants twice a month).

Jesper
I meet Jesper at the organic butcher downtown. The place is pretty spectacular: Not only are the prices shockingly high, but the butchers behind the counter are dressed in black and wear bowler hats. This is not your regular butcher around the corner! “I buy all my cold cuts here”, Jesper explains. “When it comes to cold cuts, they’re simply the best place in the country”, he says. After making his request, he whispers to me: “Never buy poultry in here. The cheapest chicken breast you can find in here – and I mean ONE chicken breast – costs 5£!”

Ecology and animal welfare
Jesper used to eat chicken breasts several times a week. They’re so cheap at the supermarket, and the kids love them. But after reading about the industrial production of poultry, he just can’t put his teeth in a regular chicken breast anymore. “They’re stuffed with chemicals and pumped with water and live under the most terrifying conditions”, he says. Recently, he watched a documentary which explained that modern chicks are a result of carefully calculating the precise balance between maximizing weight at a minimum of time while still maintaining enough leg strength that they do not simply collapse under their own body. For some chicks this calculation doesn’t quite fit, so a certain number of them simply break their legs and are trampled to death by their thousands of fellow chicken. “Normally I’m not hysterical about animals – I mean, in my worlds animals are here to be eaten. But that’s just going a bit too far, even for me!” he concludes. “And what’s more”, he continues, “ animals which have been treated that way don’t taste good!” Now he buys organic chicken at the supermarket once in a while, but in general he has simply reduced the frequency of chicken meals dramatically.
Jesper buys organic products whenever it’s possible. Previously he was too mean to buy organic fruit, which is a great deal more expensive than the regular fruit. But for a few years now he has started buying that organic too. His youngest daughter is four years old, and he’s concerned about how the chemicals and meds in the non-organic products might affect her health.

Shopping habits
Jesper divides his shopping between two kinds of supermarkets – a discount and a high-end – and a number of special shops. He knows which things he’ll look for in which places, so the regular stock vegetables like carrots, onions and potatoes, he buys in Netto, which has a good selection of organic products. Here, he also buys his dairy products, his organic muesli and a number of other basic products. Then there are things which he would never buy in a supermarket: fish, for instance. Generally, he’ll go to the butcher for meat, to the organic shop for flour, pasta, dried beans etc., to the Chinese or Thai supermarket for Asian ingredients, and to the tea shop for tea. He bakes his own bread – both dark and white. His wife has dropped white bread, so he’s on his own with that pleasure – except for the kids obviously.

Health and Taste
“I don’t care about the price, when I buy food. I go for taste and freshness, and after that for health”, Jesper says. We’re at the fish shop, and I notice how expensive the salmon is compared to the one in the supermarket. “I’m sorry, but you’d never get me to buy the salmon in the supermarket. It has a completely different texture. It looks kinda grey and dry compared to this one.” He points to a fleshy piece of pink salmon in the window counter.
For tonight, Jesper is buying lumpfish roe. I find the price pretty awesome, but he reminds me that it’s still a lot cheaper than the chicken breast you could buy across the street in the organic butcher.

I ask him about calories. He scoffs. “Well, it’s pretty common knowledge that enjoying food and avoiding fat don’t go well together. I’m not on that low-fat-no-sugar trip. I grew up in a family which truly celebrated good food. I do the same thing. Calories are not a concern!”

Asian food
We continue to the Chinese supermarket where he gets his usual bottle of oyster sauce, and his usual bag of frozen edame beans. “I just love these”, he says. “They have the nutty flavor – or a bit like almonds..” Jesper contemplates the fact that the organic principle hasn’t really reached the products for Asian cooking. He expects that this will happen in the future. He loves Asian food. He has travelled a lot in Vietnam, and he’s a great fan of their cooking. But Indian food is also a great treat, he says.

The trend in Danish cooking
“The big deal among big Danish chefs right now is to reinvent traditional Danish meals in a funky version.”, he explains. “You have to buy locally produced ingredients from the season and go completely natural. If you can pick the stuff in your own backyard it’s the best. For instance, the Danish chef Camilla Plum has made a range of salads with leaves and berries growing wild in her garden.” He reflects for a moment. “I bet they’ll start growing edame beens here in Denmark – and if they don’t, then people will stop eating them.”
Jesper is always in touch with the trends in cooking. He works as a restaurant reviewer on a large newspaper, and he receives a copy of every published cookbook. “I’ve gotta admit it”, he says. “I have a fetish for cookbooks.” He can spend hours going through them, and he rarely cooks for a dinner party without consulting one. Obviously, there are things he knows by heart, but he likes to challenge himself and try new things. He also finds inspiration in the two monthly visits to restaurants which he has to review. For instance, if he notices how several restaurants start using wild onions, then he starts to introduce that ingredient in his own cooking.

Butter
Jesper uses butter for frying fish, meat balls or breaded things. Otherwise, he fries with oil. He likes to add a big lump of butter when he roasts meat in the oven. For instance a leg of lamb – it gets a wonderful caramel-like flavor when the butter reaches a high temperature. Jesper also uses butter for gravy and for baking cakes. His bread is baked with oil.
“I always buy organic butter – preferably Løgismose, sometimes Osted. They have the best taste”, he explains. He thinks that regular butter tastes just like spreadable butter: flavorless and vapid. The organic butter, on the other hand, has a strong flavor. It seems more ‘crunchy’ and more yellow. “You can just tell that it’s been churned differently – it’s got that gritty texture which is real butter for me”, he says.
Sometimes for special occasions, Jesper buys French butter. They add more salt which gives it a slightly different taste. For his oldest daughter he buys spreadable butter. “She thinks that spreadable butter is the real butter. She won’t touch a non-spreadable butter. When I offer her some, she tells me to go get the butter – as if spreadable butter is more butter than the non-spreadable one.” Jesper shakes his head. Obviously, spreadable butter is not a favorite of his. “What can you do? They’re kids. I’ve caught my youngest saying the same thing now.” He groans.
A dog persistently sniffs at Jesper’s leg as we’re talking. He has shooed it three times already. “It’s the lumpfish roe”, he smiles. “I better head home while it’s still intact.” He waves goodbye and sets the course towards Northern Copenhagen and tonight’s dinner party.