Danish Culinary Delights at Intercontinental Hua Hin

Danish celebrity Chef Rasmus Kofoed created a unique six course dinner for 47 distinguished guests at the Intercontinental Hua Hin Resort on Saturday 23 June 2012. The delicacies were introduced personally one by one by Chef Rasmus assisting the guests in appreciating also the more subtle flavours of the ingredients.

The Intercontinental Hua Hin Resort had arranged for the unique Celebrity Chef Dinner as a charity evening in support of HRH Maha Chakri Sirindhorn’s foundation and eventually the event contributed one million Thai Baht.

The dinner took place in a special part of the luxury resort named La Residence, an exquisite heritage building designed in tune with the famed King Rama VI Summer Palace. Here Ramus Kofoed had taken over the kitchen together with his two traveling assistants, Christoffer Brink Pedersen and Nanna Rubin Galloe.

The host of the evening was Suwat Liptapanlop, a Minister in several Thai governments during the past 18 years and the owner of the Intercontinental Hua Hin Resort. Among the guests were many similarly well known high society people, including the Danish Ambassador Mikael Hemniti Winther and his wife Rattanawadee Winther.

The dinner turned out to be in fact Chef Rasmus Kofoed’s third dinner arranged recently in Thailand by his Manager Karsten Kroman. The first had been a private dinner for Suwat Liptapanlop and the second had been an exclusive garden dinner for HRH Maha Chakri Sirindhorn held in Kantary Hills hotel in Chiang Mai.

“This second event was indeed a very special event,” Rasmus Kofoed added.

On both occasion he had been assisted by his two Danish travelling chefs who felt most privileged to be selected for these star appearances in the international world of gourmet excellence.

“When working with Rasmus you learn something all the time,” said Christoffer Brink, who had just been accompanying him on a visit to Cannes where the Danish Bocuse d’Or Bronze winner, Silver winner and finally in 2011 winner of the Gold Medal had created the opening dinner at the Cannes Film Festival.

Asked whether being a visiting Chef could be compared to being conductor of a symphony orchestra, he agreed.

“Maybe I am gesticualting a bit more hectic and articulate in the kitchen as their visiting conductor but that is only because unlike an orchestra we don’t have time to rehearse this kind of dinner,” Rasmus laughed.

“I think it is important for Rasmus to bring assistants along who have worked with him for some time,” added Nanna Rubin Galloe, who has been working with Rasmus Kofoed first in his Geranium restaurant in Rosenborg Gardens for two years and then for the past another two years in his new Geranium restaurant in the office towers of Parken Stadium in Copenhagen.

Rasmus Koofoed explained about the dinner, that most of the ingredients he had brought with him from Denmark. Exceptions were the raw crab meat, some of the edible flowers and some herbs that he had sourced locally.

Creating dinners abroad was inspiring, he said and rewarding because the world of gastronomy was not limited by languages. But he had not experienced something gastronomically during his visit here that he would now go home and try to re-create in Copenhagen.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he explained.

“I get a lot of gastronomical input from going abroad, but I don’t know how it will influence my creations back in Copenhagen. Suddenly in the future I might get the idea to add a specific flavour or an ingredient to a dish and then realize that this is a reminiscence of the trip to Thailand this summer.”

What that could be, would be incidental, he added.

“But I can mention that we during this trip have tried giant red ant eggs soup and duck’s tongue.”

Unfortunately, this reporter was too surprised to ask how he liked it.

Highlights of the dinner was a Norwegian lobster and soup based on Danish hay cheese.

“Hay cheese,” we were told, “is cheese made from milk from cows being fed on hay during both winter and summer which the cows prefer and that makes the cheese tastier.”

A personal favorite of mine was the veal with juniper and red beets on the side and the climax, a desert with liquorices pudding topped with among others raspberrries and a mousse of red berries sprinkled with crackling sugar.

About Gregers Møller

Editor-in-Chief • ScandAsia Publishing Co., Ltd. • Bangkok, Thailand

View all posts by Gregers Møller

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