Food Studio / Get Away
This year started out quite different than we had first imagined. We had just piloted a new winter wilderness experience, made a beautiful catalogue on what we wanted to offer and the day after it was ready to be published, we got news of the national lockdown. For us, this was a big lesson on letting go, on slowing down and listening.
Many dinners have been paired with great beer and engaging conversations since two women in charge, Gitte Holmboe and Cecilie Dawes, met over the love for Norwegian mountains before the very first Food Studio event back in 2011. Around tables in Norway, Denmark and Japan - in woods and by lakes - it has all become sceneries to support inspiration, the birth of ideas and the co-operation to realize them. This summer, the table was set in the garden of Bøgedal in Vejle, Denmark.
This Autumn we escaped the city to visit Sidsel at Hegli Farm. We spent the afternoon harvesting vegetables, pickling green tomatoes, baking bread and making dinner, while talking about the future of the life at the farm.
For the Japanese chef Masayo Funakoshi it is vital to have close bonds to food producers and foragers. She is also an artist at heart, which shows in her cooking. We went fishing for food in the picturesque Oslo Fjord.
I live on the Merri Creek, in the inner northern suburbs of the city of Melbourne. Most days I cross the creek, or at least glimpse its waters from afar. I look for changes in the water level, in the clarity, in the speed of the flow.
In the spring of 2015, Food Studio travelled to Melbourne to explore Merri Creek and its long and compelling food growing history. During the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2015, we teamed up with Harding Street Garden, CERES, local food hero Matt Wilkinson and our guests to contemplate the food we eat and how it is produced.
This summer, Food Studio crossed the sea to bring a Nordic Get Away experience to the french capital. We spent an evening biking through Paris, visiting Holybelly and Parc du Bellevue for a herbology workshop, before sitting down and enjoy a picknick with fresh vegetables from the market.
This summer, Food Studio crossed the sea to bring a Nordic Get Away experience to the french capital. It was so much fun to go the the farmer's market in Paris in July with a lot of different vegetables and herbs that are hard to come by in Oslo. This time we tried to use the whole plant, which means the root, the fruit and the leaves, just like we learned in the herbology workshop. We planned five different dishes, but ended up with nine just by using as much as possible.
Our new series of seasonal getaways all started with a magnificent spring day by the fjords of Oslo. We explored the natural delicacies the sea had to offer - oysters, cockles, mussels and all sorts of wild growths that we could pick in the surrounding hills and forests, turning it into a meal together at the end of the eve.
After a long, hot summer, the woods are changing and preparing for autumn. The change can be felt in the air, which is now filled with the smells of berries, herbs and fungus. It is the time just before harvest, and the time when the cattle come back from summer dairy. It is the warmest month of the year, when the fish seek to the deepest part of the lakes to cool off. The dense forest is moist, hot and mystically dark – intensively yielding its last produce before the inset of autumn.