Nadine Levy Redzepi - Downtime: Deliciousness at Home

Ren Redzepi

Chef, we wont be needing you this evening, so you can head home.

This disorienting comment was directed at me many years ago, when Noma was just a handful of cooks who filled three-quarters of the dining room on a good night. If we did twenty covers at lunch, wed be high-fiving one another.

What? Is this a joke? I said, not doing a very good job of hiding my irritation. Dining rooms actually full tonight. Besides that, this was a SaturdayIm never off on Saturdayand the order came from a sous-chef, which puzzled me even more.

No, seriously, youre going home, were good, he affirmed, seconded by a chorus of encouraging glances from the rest of the team. I had no choice but to hop on my bike and see what was going on.

When I opened the door to our tiny one-bedroom apartment there were no kids around, just Nadine with a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, cooking. Pots and pans were sizzling away on the little gas burner, and steam was coming from every corner of the kitchen. In a Keyser Sze flash, my brain was flooded with images of her recent activities at the restaurant, whispers and meetings with my cooks that had struck me as somewhat sneaky at the time, though it had never occurred to me what she could possibly have in mind.

The joke was definitely on me, in the form of a five-course menu Nadine had been planning for months. She poured me a glass of wine. Sit down, relax, she said. It began, Ill never forget, with a meticulously arranged platter of the seasons vegetables, both raw and cooked, marinated in a luxurious and perfect truffle sauce. I still cant figure out how she made it, but I remember thinking to myself, Man, that should be on the menu at Noma. As clever and observant as anyone Ive ever met, Nadine had remembered a rare vacation we took to France and just how much we enjoyed eating crudits there. Now, for our first free night together in months, she had put her own spin on it. She followed this with a dish of potato skins more wonderful than any Ive ever encountered. Usually, youre only able to get a handful to that paper-thin crispness while maintaining just the right amount of creamy potato layer, but she had managed to make every single one the ideal. She had also fashioned Brussels sprout leaves into little cups and filled each with a buttery fish roe sauce. I cant quite recall what came afteraside from lots of champagne and fits of laughter that almost hurtbut to this day, its the greatest meal Ive ever eaten.

It certainly wasnt the first time she had cooked for me. I met Nadine when she was nineteen, and in those early days, when we were just getting to know each other, it always amazed me to hear that she spent her nights at home cooking for herself. I always figured teenagers went for the typical cop-out of ordering in or meeting friends at a fast food joint. At best, theyd make themselves some buttered toast.

On one of our first dates, with no inside information about my likes or dislikes, she made us a dish of sauted chicken livers with a sauce of tomatoes and chiles. Nadine wasnt totally happy with the end result, but I was thrilled: by some cosmic force she had chosen to make the one dish I had loved more than any other as a child. I wouldnt say that my family was poor, but when I was growing up there definitely wasnt a lot of money around. Most nights we ate a hearty stew of beans, and when we did eat meat, it was usually an off-cut. My mother, a Dane, would find a frozen, somewhat neglected bag of chicken livers in the supermarket and cook it with flavors that my father, from the former Yugoslavia, enjoyed: mushrooms, the versatile seasoning Vegeta, andyou guessed ittomatoes and chiles. Nadine served it to me with pasta noodles, just as my mother had when I was a kid.

I dont for one second mind sounding silly, like a story from a cheap teenagers magazine, when I say that was the evening I realized that for each of us, there is someone out there who couldnt be with anyone else, and I had been lucky enough to find mine. From that day forward, she and I were it. Thank god for chicken livers.

All of this is to say that Nadine, without ever intending it, reminded me of the values a cook can sometimes forget when theyve spent most of their young career as a mercenary in adrenaline-fueled kitchens. If I hadnt seen her channeling all of her best intentions into making someone happy, I dont think Noma would have ended up where it has. Her lack of ego and generosity of spirit showed me, and the chefs whom she would ask for tips or would cook for on their nights off, why people gather around a table.

Lately, all of this has become even more obvious as we raise our three daughters. In our home, there is always cooking going on. Its not only a comfort we can count on, its a kind of electrical current that runs through the family and keeps it going and together. Noma is a home for everyone, of courseso many kids have grown up therebut the kitchen in our house is this familys heart. As of this writing, our middle one, Genta, has learned to bake bread.