November 1. Camilla Plum will open virtual restaurant in SLOWFASHIONhouse.com

November 1. Camilla Plum will open virtual restaurant in SLOWFASHIONhouse.com

If you are a Dane — and I am — and if you have even the slightest interest in ecology, locally produced foods and SLOW FOOD, then Camilla Plum a star.

Camilla has been a star in my sky for years, now I have the great pleasure that Camilla has chosen to open virtual restaurant in SLOWFASHIONhouse.com for the launch of her first English language cookbook.

In the virtual restaurant "Scandinavian Kitchen", you can eat with your eyes and find recipes for Scandinavian food, in addition to buying the cookbook "The Scandinavian Kitchen". The food is unpretentious, with the emphasis on taste and fresh organic, preferably local ingredients.

 Camilla Plum Is a Danish food writer and organic farmer.

She has been writing about food and gardening for leading newspapers and magazines for 30 years, and hosts several very popular TV series on food and gardening that are broadcast across the Nordic Countries.

She is the mother of 4 and lives with her family In Helsinge, north of Copenhagen in Denmark, on her  family’s organic farm. Here they grow fruit and vegetables, have a large kitchen garden, pleasure gardens, and Denmark's only organic nursery garden, they have a farm shop and café and arrange brewing, baking and cookery courses.

Camilla also has a webshop featuring Scandinavia's largest selection of organic seeds, most of which are grown on the farm.

Her husband Per Kølster, originally a professor of organic agriculture at Copenhagen University, manages the farm, arable crops, grain mill, and livestock. He has a famous microbrewery as well, with malting loft and hop production, so that all ingredients for the beer are produced on the farm.

Camilla Plum explains: “The Scandinavian kitchen has at one extreme the refined and delicate Chef’s kitchen, displaying exquisite and minuscule servings of the most amazing northern delicacies: elk’s milk cheese, musk ox, and rarely seen wild herbs, mixed skillfully with more humble ingredients. The chefs are making vegetables, cabbage and kale, northern fruit and wild berries meet in new unfamiliar love affairs with more uncommon ingredients.

This kitchen is an art that is rightfully getting word wide acclaim in recent years.

Then there is the everyday meal, made in every household in Scandinavia every day of the year. Much of this food is still very traditional. Even if southern Europe and Asia has influenced our choice of food, we are still addicted to fresh fish, new potatoes, apples and herbs.

The cooking in Scandinavia is not the same all over. Northern Scandinavia has access to some of the most beautiful game, wild berries and mushrooms in the world, in southern Scandinavia we have fresh vegetables, fruit and perfect conditions for raising livestock, and the eating habits and traditional fare reflect this.

But still, there are great similarities, a certain way of mixing ingredients, as in the sweet sour flavours, horseradish sharpness, and very simple ways of cooking and preserving that is nowhere else to be found.

Scandinavian cooking balances on the fine line between extravagance and humbleness, producing a wealth of fine tastes, seasonal, daily food, and more luxurious festive food.

We are proud of our traditions, and they are mostly very much alive, some of them very local or regional. Scandinavians are eager foragers, home picklers and home bakers, and traditions are here to stay, while also happily coexisting with new ways. Young chefs and young families embrace traditions in order to evolve them, creating fresher, lighter, even more seasonal and local food. Environmental awareness is big and growing, and eating organic food, eating locally and seasonally is growing fast. Small dairies, small scale farming, smokehouses, market gardens, butchers, breweries, farmers' markets, and bakeries are opening at a fast pace. And this brings with it a recreation of local specialties, keeping and evolving traditions almost lost to large scale farming and factory food. It is happening before our eyes, and it is very, very welcome.

My book is a reflection of both the very traditional techniques, dishes and ingredients, worth preserving, and the new ones, all necessary to keep the distinctive character of Scandinavian cooking alive and well.”

Rigetta Klint