2023-12-22 19:49:18
The whole restaurant smells like orange. From the front door to the stove, an intoxicating cloud of scent wafts through the entire restaurant. Three men wearing gloves are standing in the kitchen of the two-star restaurant “Sein” in Karlsruhe. In his hands are oranges and long-handled graters. In front of everyone there is a bowl in which fine crumbs of orange peel form an ever-growing pile. Kilos of orange tropical fruit are piled up left and right. One of the men is Thorsten Bender, boss at “Being”. “We do it once a year,” he says. Usually for two days. “But we don’t see it as punishment and we often watch football.”
The rasping session is necessary to produce the house-made orange oil. For the hit, as Bender calls it, he heats rapeseed oil to 65 degrees and then leaves it at the same temperature with a huge amount of orange zest for 20 minutes. Then it goes into the cold chamber for three days. Because three is apparently a lucky number in “being”, the oil is then passed through a stocking three times.
Two or three drops are enough
When it’s finished, it smells incredibly intense. One can imagine guests searching for dozens of orange fillets in the deep dark soups made from homemade rice or lupine miso. However, two or three drops of the oil are enough for the impressive tropical fruit bouquet.
The scent of oranges belongs to the Christmas season, at least as indispensable as peppernuts, apples, almonds and currants. In this country, the fruit from the warm south was even chosen as the Christmas apple. As early as 1700 they were called oranges, loosely translated as apples from China. Because it has its roots in Asia. In addition to the shining candlelight on the tree, it brings a touch of sunshine while it is dark and frosty outside.
In the Baroque period, princes had orangeries built on their estates, buildings with huge glass windows behind which numerous lemons and oranges grew. At Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, gardeners still look after the plants, which include numerous rarities, such as the German Landsknecht trousers, a bitter orange with yellow and orange stripes that is reminiscent of the striped trouser costume of the Landsknechts.
It is sour, sweet and bitter at the same time: the yuzu. : Image: Markus Kirchgessner/Laif
For some time now, chefs have been rediscovering the noble and exquisite nature of citrus fruits and taking advantage of their diversity. There are around 1,600 varieties worldwide. In the kitchens, tangerines, Amalfi lemons, Buddha’s hand, yuzu, bergamot or bitter oranges give dishes a surprising freshness, even beyond desserts.
Acid conveys tension and lightness
Thorsten Bender is an acid fan. It conveys tension, lightness and balance, as he says. Citrus fruits, with their appetizing clouds of scent, should make you want to eat even beyond the plate, whereby the acidity of the main component should be good, but not hurt, according to Bender: as with the raw scallop slices, which are accompanied by whipped kefir stock and a light yellow kalamansi sorbet. It is the ice cream of a grassy green-skinned fruit that tastes sour and sweet at the same time – a cross between mandarin and the dwarf orange kumquat.
The two-star chef shows how many possibilities fruit offers beyond ripeness when freshly picked when he reaches for the so-called black lemon, which no one would immediately recognize as such. It comes from oriental cuisine. These are limes that are boiled and dried in the sun until they are only the size of a walnut and hard as a nut. “Their smell is cinnamon and they smell like mace,” enthuses Bender. The grated fruit from the Orient provides the flavor for a varnish that makes an elegant salmon fillet even more elegant.
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