Breanne
Carluccio
Culinary Portfolio
2025
2025
Adrift in Kalundborg
The day after I arrived, the weather was much warmer than forecasted. I was sweating in my sun hat and delirious from jet lag, lugging around my bags, aimless, and at that exact moment, squatting outside the church filming a miniature depiction of the village while the church bells rang.
A woman approached me. She startled me actually, because I was almost in a trance with my right eye pressed to the viewfinder and my left eye closed, focused solely on this miniature world in front of me as she yelled from across the courtyard.
“Isn’t it beautiful!”
She was wearing a dark linen tunic and a head scarf and told me she was preparing medieval food in the garden, that I should come take a look. I was curious because I was only just discovering where I was and what was happening around me. Tired and hungry, but also with a few hours to kill before my ferry departed, and this woman was like an apparition that appeared spontaneously. I had to do what she said, but it was also miraculously exactly what I wanted to do.
To join her, I first had to pass through the museum reception. I was encouraged to buy a ticket, since her cooking workshop was part of an exhibition and I could support her by paying. At the desk I waited until the receptionist finished a phone call in Danish. When she turned to me, I murmured shyly a few words in English about the medieval food, and she smiled.
The receptionist was about the same height as me. Behind the formality of the tall counter that separated us, we peered at each other with equal looks of satisfaction. She told me she was glad I had found the museum, but that I might not enjoy the exhibits, and the tickets were too expensive.
She spoke in a way I would later recognize as similar to how Stinne, my soon-to-be farm boss, spoke. It was loud, impersonal, and forthright, but not altogether cold. I was amused by her bluntness and her refusal to persuade me or sell me anything. Maybe it was because I had just arrived in this country, but the whole exchange struck me as distinctly un-American.
She said, “Take a look around, and if you like what you see, you can come back and pay. If you don’t like it, you can go.”
With relief, I walked back to the garden to meet the medieval woman. I had the rest of the month to worry about my expenses, and I couldn’t spend frivolously.
I said to her plainly, “I don’t think I can pay for this, but I’m interested to know what you’re doing here.”
She was excited to see me and said not to worry about the money. She was waiting for me. Not a single person had come to her demonstration. She told me her name was Ditte.
I looked around the empty courtyard and saw the landscape beyond the village for the first time. I let out a small but audible gasp. Just beyond her table full of bread and flour, beans and a bowl of buttermilk, was a big green lawn, and beyond the lawn was a steep drop in the hillside giving way to an expansive view of the Kalundborg Fjord, the wind turbines and freight containers, the boats in the marina, and the shops along the sea. I sat with her and we rolled out some dough and cooked it over the fire, then churned butter with sticks. She picked some rosemary, garlic, mint, and thyme from the garden, then mashed it with the mortar and pestle, and mixed it with the cooked white beans.
She told me she was a textile archaeologist doing research at the university in Copenhagen. I was intrigued and asked, “Why a medieval food demonstration and not something with textiles?”
We ate the bread with the butter and herbed beans while she spoke about how food connects everyone.
I wanted to yell, “That’s why I’m here!”
She proceeded to tell me her opinions about the average person’s eating habits in Denmark, and the strain that industrial farming places on such a small country, where more than half the land is under cultivation. I hadn’t yet grasped how small Denmark really was, no bigger than Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. I felt a little embarrassed by my ignorance, though grateful that she revealed it so plainly.
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When I arrived in Kalundborg I was adrift. After leaving my hostel I lay in the grass with my belongings scattered around me, watching children practice karate beneath a willow in the park. I was bound for farm work, but had no sense of what farming was like in Denmark.
I wandered the streets, trying to film everything, too stubborn to admit my camera was broken. It was the same model Varda used for The Gleaners and I, and I had brought it along because I was attached to the idea of making a travelogue. Half the time I tried to turn it on, the screen stayed black. Nervousness about arriving on the island gathered in me, but it was overcome by the sight of hollyhocks and brightly painted facades. I was convinced it was all poetry.
After meeting Ditte, I was gently pulled from that solipsistic dream. I fumbled with my camera in an attempt to capture her chopping wood for the fire and tossing in her piece of bread, but whether or not I could record her demonstration no longer mattered.
She was the first person I met in Denmark, and with uncanny timeliness, the first person to teach me about its food and farming. My uncertainty and romanticizing gave way to a sudden sense of everything falling into place—still a romantic notion, perhaps, but it was born of happenstance, and so I embraced it.
In memory of our chance meeting, I’ve reached out to Ditte again, to continue our conversation, and to share some of her medieval recipes.
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