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This year’s Nobel banquet was a lavish spread with dishes made of red deer meat, red king crabs, wild dewberries and a special tea blend with an Assam flavour served to about 1,250 guests.
An important event on the Nobel calendar, the banquet at the Stockholm City Hall last night followed the awards presentation ceremony at the Concert Hall.
Another aspect of the banquet is that the menu is revealed only when all guests are seated at their tables.
A banquet was also held at the Grand Hotel in Oslo to honour the Peace Laureates India’s Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai.
What was on the menu?
While the soup here was a cream of cauliflower and mosaic of red king crab, peas and lemon pickled cauliflower florets, the main course consisted of spiced loin of red deer, carrot terrine, salt-baked golden beets, smoked pearl onions, potato puree and game jus, a sauce.
The dessert was mousse and sorbet of wild dewberries from Gotland, saffron panna cotta and brown butter sponge cake. The dessert was brought to the serving tables on trays which also had sparklers.
The drinks served were Champagne Taittinger Brut Reserve; Villa Cafaggio 2011, Chianti Classico; and Calvet Reserve du Ciron 2010, Sauternes.
Coffee and the Nobel Museum Tea Blend, a unique blend of Assam and Chinese teas besides Gronstedts Cognac VO and Facile Punsch were also served.
This year’s chefs were Klas Lindberg and Daniel Roos.
Klas Lindberg won the 2012 Swedish Chef of the Year title and became a gold medallist at the 2012 Culinary Olympics as a member of the Swedish Culinary Team.
Roos, who was in charge of the banquet dessert, was a member of the Swedish Culinary Team in 2009—2012 that won a gold medal at the 2012 Culinary Olympics.
The menu was developed in close collaboration with the Nobel Foundation’s gastronomic advisors Fredrik Eriksson and Gert Klotzke as well as the Chef de Cuisine of Stadshusrestauranger (City Hall Restaurants), Gunnar Eriksson.
Floral arrangements
Floral arrangements at the banquet as well as the Concert Hall were created by Helen Magnusson, chief florist at Hasselby Blommor.
The theme of the decorations at the banquet was ‘Bridges of Stockholm’
The task of creating the Nobel banquet menu has been underway for a long time.
Since last spring, the chefs have been testing and tasting recipes in order to arrive at the right menu.
Forty-three chefs cooked for four days to complete the banquet meal by last evening and there were 260 servers.
The tables were set with the Nobel tableware created for the 90th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in 1991 by three Swedish designers, Karin Bjorquist, Gunnar Cyren and Ingrid Dessau.
The more than 60 tables in the Blue Hall were covered with around 500 m of linen cloth, and the meticulous table setting comprised no fewer than 7,000 porcelain pieces, 5,400 glasses and 10,000 items of silverware.
The banquet programme followed tradition and began with the entry procession of the Royal family and other guests of honour down the grand stairway and into the Blue Hall at 7 p.m. local time.
King Carl XVI Gustaf came with his dinner companion May-Britt Moser, this year’s Laureate in Medicine, while Queen Silvia came with Chairman of the Board of the Nobel Foundation Carl-Henrik Heldin.
Crown Princess Victoria came with Chemistry Laureate Eric Betzig.
Last year, dishes made of Guinea hen, Norwegian lobster and sea buckthorn were served.
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