Creme Caramel with Crab Apples and Mulberries

The project Salt Dykes is a serious invitation to let the imagination (the capability to generate images as a tool for learning and forming) be dragged on the other side of the membrane, to make culture permeable and adapt it to changing, non-linear, non-dichotomous conditions. 

The menu is an exercise to the taste as a means to defy the general understanding or practicing of spaces and edibility, hence the paradox. Recipes records no weight or measures, no procedural or serving hints but a way to think about ingredients and reframe their value as such.

That was just a regular creme caramel, even baked in a not very efficient domestic oven, yet made with a very rich and tasty cream and flavourful eggs. Oh, sure, a dollop of chickpeas miso. The freeze dried mulberries provide that delicate fruity touch, almost ethereal. The crab apples, that’s another story. They are sour and tart, nothing to do with crustaceans. The name as far as I know is generic for a number of species of aromatic, tiny apple-looking fruits. They were largely used in the production of cider and compotes before we opted for sweeter and smoother tastes. In Northern Europe they are still quite common in parks and along streets and canals as decorative and resistant small trees. Their seeds are carried by birds and other animals and they colonise abandoned and neglected plots. I picked these in that strip of forestated land behind NOMA in Copenhagen (I wonder if they have even overlooked this intriguing fruit). For a light caramel, heat the sugar with just enough water to prevent it from sticking to the pan, and a dash of shoyu (from Meta, in Copenhagen). It has a beautiful afternote of liquorice.