Minced Meat
Gabriel Sørensen gets down to the meat of the matter.
🥵 Κάνει πολύ ζέστη στην Αθήνα! It’s only May, but it’s gettin’ hot in hurr in Athens.
Favorite Food interviews real people about their favorite food.
It’s just about the ingredients you use.
On a sunny afternoon in Athens, I met up with architect and Danish design lover, Gabriel Sørensen.
As the pot of Bolognese simmered away in the kitchen, we chatted about his love of minced meat over wine just as the sun started to set over the city.
What's your favorite food?
Mince (minced meat/ground meat).
Why is this your favorite food?
I like mince because it's such a versatile food/ingredient. It forms the basis of so many great dishes, especially European dishes.
It’s so versatile.
The basis of spaghetti Bolognese is just meat, tomatoes, and onion, which is also the basis for moussaka or karnıyarık in Turkey, an aubergine stuffed with mince and cooked in the oven.
The Bolognese looks great so far (I peer into the simmering pot)
I think one of the first dishes I made was spaghetti Bolognese. I decided to try and make the perfect Bolognese. I would make it more and more advanced – I would fry it in duck fat and roast it in the oven and there was celery and carrots.
Then I realized that the way to make a really good Bolognese is to keep it really simple. It’s just about the ingredients you use.
I remember the first time I made a Bolognese at home for my parents, my dad was like, “Why did you put grass in this?” It was oregano. Adding a herb or some kind of spice that wasn’t salt or pepper was just so foreign to them.
Any other memories you have with mince?
In Denmark, a lot of the food is based on mince. There's one dish called millionbøf (million beef) which is fried mince and onion with what we call soya sauce (but it's not), salt, and pepper. Then you pour it over mashed potato and that's delicious.
I made it myself the other day probably for the first time in who knows how long. It's not a great dish, but it brings me to the memories of something that would be served in a cafeteria.
I don’t really know Danish food, how is it?
It’s quite bland. That’s why I find it so bizarre that Nordic cuisine has taken off and Noma in Copenhagen is one of the best restaurants in the world. People are traveling to Denmark to experience the food and I imagine they’d be quite disappointed because the majority of Danish food is just various kinds of pork or minced meat and potatoes.
Any interesting facts about mince?
Meatballs, even Swedish meatballs, originally came from Turkey where it’s beef or lamb mince. Meatballs were imported to Sweden by King Charles XII from Turkey at the time of the Ottoman Empire. 1
Why did he import meatballs to Sweden?
Have you had meatballs?
❤️ Thanks Gabriel for sharing your love of mince with me.
Sweden tweets about the true origin of Swedish meatballs https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-43960739