An Amazing Culinary Experience In Jakarta

On 21st of May the Norwegian Embassy and the Norwegian Seafood Export Council invited approximately 45 people from restaurants, media and the food retail business to experience a culinary marvel at C’s restaurant in Grand Hyatt, Jakarta. The lucky people that attended this event were, literally, in for a treat. This started a 5 day period with a special seafood menu at C’s designed by Norwegian chefs Mr Jostein Medhus and Mr Stig Drageide.
    On 21st of May people were arriving at C’s restaurant in Grand Hyatt and were greeted by H.E. ambassador Blokhus. In his opening speech, the ambassador said that the aim of the event was to introduce to Indonesians the treasures from the cold, clean waters of Norway. Norwegian salmon, which by many is considered as the best in World, was obviously a feature at the promotion. However, king crab salad and pan fried scallops had important cameo appearances.
    After the opening remarks from the ambassador, the program continued with a cooking demonstration from the Norwegian Chefs, Chef Jostein Medhus from the Culinary Institute of Norway and Chef Stig Drageide from Mezza9 Restaurant in Grand Hyatt Singapore.  The chefs had a very entertaining performance while preparing the seafood to be served to the invitees. One unforgettable comment from chef Jostein was that one should treat the fish as a woman, delicately.
    The chefs demonstrated several ways to handle seafood in the best possible way, and gave the audience examples such as getting the scallop out of its shell, how to make fillet from fresh salmon as well as how to take the crab meat out of its back and legs. The guests were encouraged to interact with the chefs during the presentation and from this we could learn that every day 27 million dishes are made from Norwegian seafood all worldwide.
    After the demonstration by the chefs, guests were given the possibility to taste this exquisite food.
    First course, an appetizer, was King Crab salad. It consisted of boiled green beans mixed with sliced tomato, paprika and of course boiled King Crab meats, with mayonnaise, salt and black pepper.  It had a very delicious and fresh taste. The king crab meat was extremely tender. The next appetizer was pan fried scallops. The scallops were fried lightly in a pan, and with some simple seasoning, they had a light and almost sweet taste.
    Confute of Salmon was the main course and the chefs had earlier demonstrated a rather unique way to prepare the salmon, namely slowly cooking the salmon in a mix of olive oil and sunflower oil at 50 C, only adding garlic, rosemary and thyme. With asparagus, chives and hollandaise sauce, the taste was really phenomenal!
    The tasting was closed by a sweet delicious dessert, apple compote with sour cream, crumbled peanut and cardamom.
    All guests seemed very satisfied with the event, and as one participant commented; “it was truly a heavenly journey through the Norwegian sea and an amazing culinary experience”.

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