The secrets from the Chef & Sommelier

I am in Poland to judge the Polish culinary cup (chef of the year) 2013 invited by the organization behind the competition. This was a great fair and competition on a very high standard in all the kitchens and great achievements among the competitors. I am so lucky to be invited and to meet all the passionate chefs from different countries, there is a bright future with chefs without borders; I love you guys and thanks a lot for all the good laughs and deep discussions. Thank you Eva Wojtysiak for taking so good care of me.

To reflect the land and soil in a wine is not easy and you need to focus and work very hard for this, one that is doing just this is the lovely Sabine Ohler from the weingut J.F.Ohler in Gimmeldinger Pfalz. I just love all of Sabine’s wines and the style she have as a female winemaker borne in to the land and raised in the wine cellar, she knows how to express the tradition nicely blended to suit the modern taste of German wines. All of her wines are dry or with just a dash of sugar to balance the wines that have a very high to medium acidity, great full body and very long aftertaste. Due to that she is not a part of the VDP she can not use the “GG” on her label but the wines are at the same level and everybody knows that “Idig” is one of the best “GG” in Germany. The Riesling “Mandelgarten alte reben” have lush and watering mouthful with great citrusy acidity and long lingering finish. Madame Ohler makes some great red wines as well with the spätburgunder “JFO” on m...

To be invited as a judge in foreign countries is a true pleasure and great honour for me and I love every second of it and also to meet all wonderful and creative chefs out there. My trip to Riga in  Latvia  last week was an amazing experience in every sense, great competition, excellent young chefs and great food all around, well done guys. Latvia have some great chef talents and a nice working chefs club managed by the lovely Svetlana Riskova head chef at the Tallinn hotel in Riga and their restaurant The lovely lady Rita Stramkale and Kadrija Klesnika among others that took so good hand of me and I am ever grateful for. There are many good restaurants and to just mention a few are Dome Hotel, Biblioteka no 1, Kalku Varti and Vincents among many more. Riga is a big city but the old town centre is just beautiful and to do a long weekend here is easy and well worth. I will be back.  

The Pfalz as wine region are in big changes with many young winemakers doing traditional Pfalz wines but in a super modern way with great result that will increase and put more fame to this historic sites. One of the new guys is Andreas Rings of Weingut Rings where he make some very serious wines with his brother as companion and head of the vineyards. Weingut Rings was selected as one of the best 100 producer in the whole of Germany in 2012 and that must be a great achievement by this 26 year old winemaker. The white wines shows great “terroir” and some of the best complexity with absolutely no sugar left in them, fantastic dry wines. But Andreas holy grail is the Spätburgunder where his brilliance show of in the best possible way, magic wines and I am so happy to taste them all. Lots of Pinot makers out there have something to learn from this guy.

German wines and especially the wines from Pfalz was the theme for the wine tour this year and o`boy what a surprise this was, fantastic wines, great passionate young winemakers and magical vineyards. The whole trip was actually organized by our great friend Heike Larsson who lives basicly in the vineyards and has all the knowledge of the area and also the best possible connections in the wine industry here, Heike we love you and are so thankfully for your effort of keeping us busy all the time. The first one I would like to present for you is the young and very funny winemaker Jurgen Krebs who makes dramatic and lovely wines with the focus on Spätburgunder (pinot noir) he is selected as one of the bright future winemakers of the VDP and it will be a true pleasure to follow him in to the future. The wines from Musikantenbuckel was just amazing. Mr Krebs love his wines and have such an eclectic passion for this but the tradition is always there (thanks to his dad) but...

I have not been blogging lately due to my well needed summer vacation with my family, Bianca start wondering where the heck her father was for the past months J I wanted to make up to her in the best way possible, HEY ! Lets go to Spain ! We hade a wonderful time in dads new house with our own pool and open-door kitchen for me to cook in, just love It and later on great excursions in the afternoon/evening. Cartagena is a fantastic place that you all must visit, so full of history, nice cultural buildings and the most amazing harbour with great restaurants and small walkabouts. Los Alcazares in the most beautiful little town with great beaches and the warmest water in the med Mar Menor, just fantastic and worth visiting. La Manga is a very trendy place with lots of beautiful villas and great sandy beaches go there and embrace the Spanish sun. September is here and it is the full throttle forward to great adventures with friends and family, I will keep you posted. ...

Taste of Sweden is a great concept that shows of many of the great food produced in this beautiful country all of it perfectly package by the TV4 mobile road show around Sweden . The chefs for this amazing show off is the four guys from the national culinary junior team all manage by the team captain Pi Le with assistance from Robert Sandberg, Johan Laiti and Erik Seger all of them a great future in Swedish gastronomy. I tasted some of the food presented there and I love every bit of it, all of it was very creative with bold and gutsy flavours well presented in half portions so we could try many of the dishes. Everything that was served is farmed and raised in Sweden and so was all the beverages presented here with beer, spirit and even the wines was made in Sweden (we do produce wine here) And we have to finish off with some Swedish fika and all the cookies that you can eat J ( fika is a coffee or tea with cookies or cakes for hours) Thanks guys for a great job sh...