How a Renowned Chef uses Ancient Cooking Techniques to Create a Unique Experience

This week on The Dish, we take you to London's Ekstedt at the Yard, the latest endeavor for Michelin star chef Niklas Ekstedt. Hailing from Sweden, Ekstedt gained international acclaim for using ancient Scandinavian methods to create unique and contemporary dishes, all without using gas or electricity. I was invited into the kitchen to get a taste of this unique culinary experience, Flameside. So I just set up the fire with different bricks every day. It's a cooking technique as old as man. But for acclaimed chef Niklas Ekstedt, what's old is new again. Put that in the fire. You see the smoke coming in from the juniper. Cooking over open flames with no gas or electricity. And then peas and a tiny bit of oil. You want them to be a little charred. It's simplicity at its roots, you know. The results are not. Like these English peas served with grilled cream and potato and topped with dried reindeer flakes. I almost can't decide what flavor I like the most because just as I'm tasting like that crunch and the saltiness of that, then the pea kind of explodes a little bit. I love this. Position one and two will have the monkfish. Ekstedt drawing technique and flavor from his Swedish heritage. To create the enticing dishes served at London's Ekstedt at the Yard where we met up and the original Ekstedt back home in Stockholm. Everyone calls me the fire chef, but for me it wasn't the fire that was the most interesting. The most interesting aspect of it was the historical part of it. Like how did we cook before electricity was introduced? We were so limited, but we still made delicious food. I drove with my son the other day and we were listening to old Bob Dylan folk music. And you know, he played with just an acoustic guitar and his voice and it was just amazing music. And I think cooking is the same. You don't need all electric gadgets to cook delicious food. You need like one heating source and then you go. Ekstedt grew up in a rural part of northern Sweden. His father was the chef in the family, sparking an interest, which led Ekstedt to a gastronomic high school. After graduation, he headed to the U.S. It was mind-blowing. I had never been to like a Chinese restaurant. I'd never eaten sushi. Every day was like a new day. He began working in the kitchen of the acclaimed Charlie Trotters in Chicago. We had famous chefs coming in like every day. Celebrities, like super celebrities every night. Ekstedt would move on to high-end kitchens in Europe, eventually returning to Sweden, opening his first restaurant at the age of 21. But he admits he didn't find his identity in cooking until after closing. So I decided that, okay, so I need to come back. I need to open a restaurant. And that needs to be something really, really interesting. Something that people have not had before. Like cooking with fire. He had no real blueprint for that kind of historical cooking. So Ekstedt researched, finding foods and tools used centuries before. I started out with what type of wood that I wanted to use. And to see what type of wood that was a staple wood for cooking like 200 years ago. And I quickly came to the conclusion that it was birch I wanted to work with. And then I started playing around with cast iron and birch. The first year or two, I did not use ambers at all. I just used the open flames, high heat from birch, cast iron. So it was very much like a Game of Thrones kitchen. As the kitchens evolved, so have the dishes. Though still rooted in the past. Like these oysters flambeau. So I found that the drawing was on a cone that they collected the dripping from. And then you put fat into it. And the secret is to get it really hot and get a lot of fire on it going. And then you're cooking the oyster. So you're literally cooking the oyster from the dripping and the fire. Yeah, the fire and the fat, the dripping fat cooks the oysters. And then I use a little juice from the oysters. And put a little bit of butter into it. So it's like an oyster beurre blanc. Beurre blanc sounds fancy. It's oyster juice with butter. Enhancing the taste, diners enjoy their oysters as I did. Fireside. This is amazing. Yeah, because you've got the fat and then seafood and then apples. So it's like... Oh, that's delicious. Yeah. For our next dish, Extet took from the Sami, the Scandinavian indigenous community. A freshwater char topped with a sauce including salted pork, oxalis, juniper and gooseberries. I think this is a very, like, cool dish to show how, like, traditional cooking methods that we use in, like, rural Sweden can be used in a fine dining environment. Without gimmicky, you know? Because they're not made up. This is for real. And it actually gives, enhances the flavors and makes the fish just delicious. It's absolutely spectacular. Yeah. As was the hayflame smoked pigeon. You smell it? Oh, yeah. It's completely different, right? Oh my gosh. Yes. Both tender and flavorful, it was served with wild garlic morels, pear and truffle. We all should learn to cook like that. Yeah. I still have some pudding for you, though. There's still room. Good. There's always room. Good. To finish off our gastronomic journey, that pudding, which is actually a mushroom souffle, sprouted from a starter gone south. My wife came by the restaurant to taste it. I just told her, like, I made a souffle, taste it. And she tasted, oh, the pudding. And I'm like, yeah, she's got a point. Yes. So now it's a mushroom sep souffle with pine sprouts ice cream. Oh my gosh. This is your weapon. Oh, it's delicious. I had my vegetables for dessert. And protein. It is amazing to me, everything you've done. This is not our conventional way of cooking. No. And I've had an exceptional meal. Thank you. That makes me happy. I'm serious, like, blows my mind. Thank you. It really did, because if you think about it, it's like, well, it's a campfire, and you're cooking, but the food we were eating is nothing that I've ever experienced at a campfire. It was absolutely delicious and incredible. And all the different techniques, the hay, the embers with the birch. Yeah. And the fat. That was my favorite part. Those oysters were just so delicious. And it makes you realize what we used to do. Stuff you could have done 2,000 years ago to cook food, you can still do today, and it's still really good. Yeah. He was telling me he found some new, old tools that he's going to start playing around with to do more stuff. We've got to get some fire here in the studio. Fire.