Chef Christian Puglisi's Buttermilk Breakast Soup

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Welcome to Summer Food Memories, a series we’re doing in collaboration with Tasting Table. We asked four people—writers and chefs we like, plus a couple surprisesto help us say goodbye to summer with culinary nostalgia. Then Tasting Table developed recipes to match

Photo courtesy Tasting Table; design by Tiffany Choi 

Christian Puglisi was born in Italy, grew up in Denmark, and cooks all kinds of things at his acclaimed Relæ restaurant in Copenhagen. The chef has been quite busy with his cookbook, his other restaurant, a popular wine bar called Manfreds, and a soon-to-open pizza and meat-forward restaurant called Bæst (“beast” in Danish). He’l always have time for koldskål, though, a sweet, cold breakfast soup made with buttermilk.

Koldskål is my favorite hot-weather food; it’s a very classic thing to eat for breakfast during the summer when it’s hot. It’s not really a part of my childhood, because I am an Italian immigrant here, but it’s a part of every Danish person’s childhood.

It’s nostalgic for me because it was the first independent restaurant thing that I did myself. We set up a shop at Roskilde Festival [in 2009]—I went down there having this idea that I wanted to do it to finance the restaurant [Manfreds]—and we made koldskål and pea soup for people of the festival.

It was July, so it suits perfectly with strawberry season. You traditionally eat it with strawberries and kammerjunker, a shortbread biscuit that you put on top. The preparation is based on eggs and buttermilk; it’s whipped egg yolks that you add buttermilk to, becoming a very liquid-y fresh custard. It’s seasoned mostly with lemon juice and lemon zest—some people add vanilla—and then you pour it over strawberries and eat it with a with spoon.

I was thinking, “How can we make something affordable, vegetarian and fun for a music festival?” In the heat, koldskål was the perfect thing. Buttermilk is very light, tart, and fresh; it goes very well in the summer.

We didn’t succeed in raising money for the restaurant—that required much more hard work—but it was a fun way to get out there and let people know what it’s about.

We called the stand Manfreds, and that became the name of the restaurant. Koldskål is always on the menu there.

GET THE RECIPE: Buttermilk Soup