At the start of this year, the celebrated Danish chef Frederik Bille Brahe, 40, closed down Apollo Bar & Kantine, his beloved art-world hangout in the courtyard of Copenhagen’s Kunsthal Charlottenborg, in order to reinvent the space and its menus. He and his executive chef, Yuta Kurahashi, 36, shifted their focus to dinner and now serve an evening meal of pared-back dishes that riff on seasonal ingredients. But if Bille Brahe likes to keep things simple, he also enjoys surprising his guests. The dish he calls Salada Rosso presents as an untouched head of radicchio but it is, in fact, a clever piece of trompe l’oeil: the chicory has been deconstructed, its bitter leaves coated with a rich, earthy black garlic and almond cream and a sweet citrus vinaigrette, then reassembled with chunks of tart blood orange tucked between them. Radicchio, Bille Brahe says, is a vegetable “most people think they don’t like — but then you make something with it that changes their minds.” Here, he shares the recipe.
Frederik Bille Brahe’s Salada Rosso
4 servings
Ingredients
-
2 heads of radicchio
-
2 blood oranges and 1 more for zest
For the crumble:
-
1⅘ ounces dry (ideally day-old) bread
-
Olive oil
-
About 15 walnuts
-
3½ ounces almonds, with the skin removed
-
¾ cup, plus a tablespoon of water
-
3 cloves of black garlic
-
Salt
For the dressing:
-
½ cup rose petal vinegar or red wine vinegar
-
2 teaspoons brine from preserved lemons
