Shepherd's pie

I have used the English name for this dish, but the dish itself is a logical invention that could have happened any place where potatoes and mutton are eaten. I occasionally make it to use up leftover Sunday roast.

250 g leftover meat (for this to be a real shepherd’s pie, it should be mutton. If it’s beef, the dish is called Cottage Pie)
25 g butter, margarine or other cooking fat
2 tbs flour
250-300 ml meat broth or gravy
Some left-over mashed potatoes

In case you don’t have left-over mashed potatoes:
750 g cooked potatoes
100-200 ml milk
25 g butter or margarine
Salt and pepper
1 finely chopped onion
Breadcrumbs
Cheese, grated

Make the mashed potatoes, using this method but the above ingredients. Add the onion when the mash is ready to eat. It is also good to add one beaten egg or two beaten egg whites into the mash (I never do this, but it probably makes a better crust).

The meat can be either boiled or roasted, but this does not suit smoked meats.
Grease an oven proof dish and sprinkle in some breadcrumbs. Slice the meat and arrange in the bottom of the dish. Pour the gravy on top. Top with the mashed potatoes and sprinkle with some grated cheese and breadcrumbs.

Bake at about 175°C for 20-30 minutes, or until hot through.

If there is no gravy or sauce, make some gravy with a little broth thickened with a paste of flour and water and a little bit of sauce browning added.

Brauðterta – Icelandic style sandwich loaf: Ham and egg

Decoration: Ham, canned peaches, tomato rose and cucumber strips.

For 3 layers of bread (refer to the first sandwich loaf post for more information)

150 g mayonnaise
100 g sour cream
Aromat or Accent, to taste (may be left out)
Piquant seasoning
150 g thinly sliced ham
5 hard-boiled eggs
1/2 can green asparagus

Mix together mayo, cream and seasonings. Mash the eggs with a fork and chop the asparagus finely. Mix everything together. Put the spread between the layers of bread, spread mayo-sour cream evenly mixture over the loaf and cover with slices of ham. Garnish with, e.g. tomato roses, egg slices, cucumber, bell peppers, halved or quartered grapes, fresh parsley.

More decoration ideas:

Decoration: ham and red bell pepper.

A roll. Decoration: ham, red and green bell peppers.

A giant sandwich. Decoration: ham, canned peaches, red bell pepper strips, orange slices, asparagus and parsley.

Stuffed leg of lamb

This is a rather good Sunday dish. If you don't know how to de-bone a leg of lamb, either buy it de-boned or get your butcher to de-bone it for you.

1 leg of lamb (about 2 kg. before boning)
50 g prunes, stoneless
30 g dried apples
2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. pepper

Soak the apple slices to soften. Rub half of the salt and pepper on the inside of the leg of lamb and stuff with the prunes and apple slices. Sew closed. Rub the remaining salt and pepper on the outside of the meat.

Put meat into a greased oven pan and roast at 250°C for about 90 minutes, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the steak shows 160°C. Start by roasting for 10-20 minutes, then add water to cover the bottom of the pan, to a depth of about 1 cm. Baste the meat with the cooking liquid every 15 minutes or so. Top up the water when it starts to boil down.

About 10-15 minutes before the steak is done, remove it from the oven, pour the cooking liquid into a saucepan, through a strainer. Put the steak back into the oven until a nice crust has formed. While it is in the oven, make the sauce:

Skim the fat off the surface of the cooking liquid. Heat in the saucepan. Make a thin, smooth paste from a couple of tbs. of flour and a bit of cold water. When the cooking liquid boils, stir the flour paste into the boiling liquid, stirring with a beater. Pour slowly and when you feel the liquid starting to thicken, stop pouring. Gently simmer the sauce for a couple of minutes, to remove the raw flour taste. Adjust the flavour with salt and pepper, and if you use it, add a little sauce colouring to get a nice, brown colour.

Serve either whole or sliced, with potatoes (poached, caramelised or mashed), sauce and whatever other side dishes you like (I like redcurrant jelly, salad and peas).

Salting meat - Saltkjöt

Someone e-mailed me not too long ago and asked for a recipe for salting mutton. This is the recipe in my mother‘s old cookbook. I haven‘t tested it, but am relying on my grandmother‘s advice for the information that was missing, such as the minimum brining time and how long it will stay preserved.

The recipe contains saltpetre (potassium nitrate), the use of which has been mostly discontinued in Iceland due to health concerns. Saltpetre was used as an extra preservative and it also gives the food a characteristic pink hue. It may be safely left out, but the meat may not keep for quite as long as it would otherwise. The sugar tenderises the meat.

Meat may be dry salted or brined. Dry salting is best for lean meat and brining for fatty meat.


For 50 kg of meat (mutton, lamb, horse, beef, pork, etc.):

Salting mixture:
3 kg salt (coarse pickling salt works best)
250 g sugar
2 litres water
(30 g saltpetre)

The meat should be cut into in serving-sized pieces (half-cutlets, steaks, etc.). It should be clean and should preferably be brined or salted as soon as it has cooled after butchering.

Choose a clean, watertight container with a tight lid for the salting/brining (a barrel is traditional). Its size should depend on the amount of meat you want to preserve. It should always be as close to full as possible.

Method:
Dry salting:
Mix together salt, sugar and saltpetre (if using). Sprinkle a little of the mixture on the bottom of the barrel. Roll the meat pieces in the mixture and pack them tightly into the barrel in layers. Press down. Sprinkle a little salt over each layer and pour 100 ml water (2/5 cup) water over each layer. End with a solid layer of salt.

Put a lid or something that fits snugly into the barrel on top of the meat and weigh it down, e.g. with bricks. A brine will form as the juices leak out of the meat. Make sure that the meat is all under the surface of the brine (thus the weighing down). Leave the meat in the barrel for at least 3 weeks, in a cool place. Should keep for up to a year if kept cool.

Brining:
Brining is adviceable for warmer weather and fatty meat. To make the brine, mix salt, sugar and saltpetre in approximately the percentages in the recipe for the salting mixture, and dissolve in cool water until a raw potato floats in the brine. Pack the meat in layers as in the previous recipe, pouring in the brine when the barrel is almost full. Keep topping up with brine as it seeps into the meat layers, and weight down when the meat has settled and the barrel will take no more brine.

Before cooking the salted/brined meat, soak it in plenty of water as needed (overnight or longer, depending on for how long it has been in the brine, changing the water a couple of times).

This meat may be cooked and served with cooked potatoes and cabbage. The stock may be used to make pea soup.

Blóðmör - Icelandic blood sausage

Blood sausage is an ancient dish and can be found in many countries where domestic animals are kept and there are no taboos against eating blood. This is the Icelandic version.

Slátur is the collective name for blood sausage and liver sausage, and also for the necessary ingredients. "To take slátur" means to buy the ingredients and make the sausages, and in fact Icelandic supermarkets sell boxes with blood, livers, suet and stomachs (sometimes also the salt, cereals, thread and needles) in the autumn when the summer lambs are slaughtered.

2 litres sheep's blood
1 litre water
50 g coarse salt
1 kilo rye flour
200 g flour
400 g oatmeal
2 - 2 1/2 kilos sheep's suet

Some people add raisins or chopped Iceland moss to the stuffing. If using Iceland moss, use correspondingly less rye flour and a little more water in the stuffing. If using raisins, use correspondingly less suet.

Cut each stomach into 4-5 pieces suitable for stuffing, or use bags of sausage skin or even plastic cooking bags if you can't get stomachs or they don't appeal to you (sorry, the recipe does not state how many sheep stomachs are needed and I can't tell you because I always use sausage skin bags and make a much smaller recipe).

Strain the blood and mix with water and salt. Stir in the flour, rye flour and oatmeal. Chop the suet - taste will decide whether finely or coarsely, but make the pieces no larger than 1/2 cm across. Mix with the rest.

Take the pieces of stomach and sew bags out of them, using blanket stitch or overcasting stitch, leaving a hole for stuffing. Only stuff each bag a little more than half full. Stitch closed (use pure cotton thread).

To cook, drop the sausages into plenty of boiling salted water and simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Turn over now and then, and prick gently if they look likely to burst. Remove from the water. If the sausages are to be served cold, let them cool in the skins. Store in the refrigerator.

Remove plastic cooking bags and sausage skins before serving. The stomach bag can be peeled off before serving or served and eaten with the stuffing.

Serving:
Serve hot with boiled or mashed potatoes.
Serve cold on the side with rice pudding or porridge or sliced on top of bread.
Fry and serve sprinkled with sugar and mashed potatoes on the side.
Pickle in whey for a month or more and serve cold. Blood sausage can actually go sour on its own, with a flavour similar to whey-pickling.

May be frozen if raw.

Boiled and stewed rutabagas (swedes) - Soðnar rófur og rófustappa

This root is known variously as a rutabaga, swede, swedish turnip or yellow turnip.

I prefer rutabagas raw, but I also like them in lamb soup.

Poached rutabagas:

Wash 1 kg. the rutabagas in cold water and peel them. If small, leave whole or halve, if big, quarter and then halve or cut into wedges and halve those. Try to make the pieces a uniform size.

Bring 1/2 liter water with 2 tsp salt to a gentle boil. Drop the rutabaga pieces into the water and poach - or steam them for a stronger flavour - until soft. Take care not to overcook, of they will become watery and bland.

Serve with boiled meats and fish.

Mashed rutabagas:

1 kg rutabagas
salted water
(100-200 ml milk)
50 g butter
salt, pepper, (sugar)

Wash, peel and re-wash the rutabagas in cold water. Cook in the salted water until soft. Remove from the cooking liquid and mash thoroughly. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the mash and thin with the milk, if needed, to the consistency of thin mashed potatoes. Add salt, pepper and sugar, if desired.

Traditionally served, hot or cold, with traditional Þorri foods.

Pickled red beets

Red beets are traditionally served with meats, especially pork, but I like them best in herring salad, creamy beet salad (recipe upcoming) and with liverwurst on Danish rye bread.

Red beets
water
salt

100-200 g sugar
1 liter white vinegar

Wash the beets thoroughly in cold water, put into cold water, add salt and cook until done through. Remove from the cooking liquid and gently remove the skins with your hands and cut off the tops. Slice the beets into slices, about 1/2 cm thick (I like them crinkle-cut). Fill a pickling jar with the beet slices.

Cook together sugar and vinegar until the sugar is melted. Pour boiling vinegar over the beet slices. They will keep in sealed jars for 2-3 months.

Red beet salad - Rauðrófusalat

This is delicious with pork roast, ham, hangikjöt or salt herring:

Pickled red beets (beetroots)
Sweet apple
Beet juice
Lemon juice
Cream
Sugar
all to taste

The beets and apples are cut into small cubes and mixed into softly whipped cream, along with lemon juice, sugar to taste, and enough beet juice to turn the salad pink.

Boiled lamb, mutton, veal or fish with curry sauce

My mother used to make this dish several time a year when I was growing up, and I liked it then, but now that I have learned to appreciate genuine Indian and Chinese curries, I never make it, simply because I detest pre-mixed curry powder (the only thing I use it for is sauce for marinated herring). The curry used is the mild type, but I imagine that a medium hot curry powder would be good with mutton, which has a stronger flavour than lamb or veal.

This is a relatively new but still traditional Icelandic dish. I think curry powder first appeared in Iceland in the 1940s or 50s, and this dish has been part of the Icelandic everyday diet ever since. Lamb or mutton is generally used, but this recipe is also suited to veal.

750 g lamb, mutton or veal
800 ml water
2 tsp salt
2 carrots

Curry sauce:
2 1/2 to 3 tbs flour
1 tsk curry powder
150 ml cold water
400-500 ml meat cooking liquid or stock


100 g rice
1 liter water
1 tsp salt

A cheap cut like shoulder can be used in this dish. Meat should be in small pieces, about 2-3 mouthfuls each piece.

Bring the water to the boil and drop in the pieces of meat. Skim and salt. Lower the temperature to simmer and cook under a lid until it is soft and just beginning to come off the bone (about 40 minutes to an hour for lamb, 1-2 hours for mutton). Clean and slice the carrot and cook with the meat for the last 10 minutes. When the meat is cooked, remove from the saucepan and keep warm while you make the sauce.

To make the sauce, sift together the flour and curry powder. Mix with the water to make a paste.

Strain the cooking liquid from the meat, return to the saucepan and bring to the boil. Add the salt. When the liquid is boiling, pour in the flour/curry paste in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Keep stirring until the sauce boils again. Simmer gently for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Cook the rice according to the instructions on the packet.

To serve with fish:
Poach the same amount of cod or haddock as there is meat in the above recipe, leaving out the carrots. Instead of cooking liquid from meat, make the sauce with the cooking liquid from the fish, fish stock or milk. Serve with rice.

Breaded lamb cutlets - Steiktar kótilettur í raspi

You can use either rib cutlets or leg cutlets to make this dish. This was one of my favourite Sunday dishes when I was growing up, and remains a comfort food for me.

The recipe works with pork or veal cutlets as well, but the traditional meat is lamb.

750 g of rib half-cutlets or leg cutlets of lamb
2 egg whites or 1 egg and 2 tbs milk
3 tbs bread crumbs (we generally use Paxo brand crumbs, but home-made or other brands are fine as long as they are unflavoured)
2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp pepper*
100 g butter or margarine
20 g butter

1-2 onions
extra butter as needed
2-3 tbs water

Traditionally, the cutlets are beaten with a meat mallet, but if you have nice, tender lamb, it really isn't necessary.

Set up a mise-en-place: frying pan on the stove, dish with bread crumbs and spices, dish with egg, dish with cutlets.

If using egg whites, whip them until they begin to froth. If using a whole egg, break and stir vigorously with the milk until slightly frothy. Mix together the bread crumbs and salt and pepper.

Melt the butter/margarine in the pan and when it is hot, start frying the cutlets: coat each cutlet with egg and then with bread crumbs and drop into the pan. When the crumbs on top begin to look damp, turn over. When both sides are evenly browned, put pats of butter on top of each cutlet and fry over low heat for about 10 minutes. Leg cutlets need longer cooking than rib cutlets. Remove the cutlets and keep warm in the oven until the onions are ready.

Alternatively, arrange the cutlets in a single layer in an oven-proof dish and bake for 30-40 minutes at 180°C, turning twice. Dot with butter for the last 10 minutes.

Slice the onions, turn up the heat and brown the onions in the remaining butter, adding more of needed. When golden, add water and cook until it evaporates.

Arrange the cutlets on a platter and either pour the onions over the cutlets or serve on the side in a bowl. Serve with fried or boiled potatoes and fresh or cooked vegetables, rhubarb jam and cooked green marrow peas for an authentic Icelandic flavour. I also love mushrooms fried in butter with this dish, but that's not traditional, and, strictly speaking, neither are fresh vegetables.


Note:
* for seasoning, I add Aromat and a spice mixture called Kød & Grill, both made by Knorr. If Aromat and Kød & Grill isn't available, you can use Accent and Season-All, or just use the basic salt and pepper.

Kidney stew

500 g kidneys - sheep, veal or pork
flour mixed with salt, pepper and paprika to taste
50 g butter or frying fat
2 onions, finely chopped
3-4 carrots, sliced
250 g tomatoes

Clean the kidneys and cut each into 4 parts. Coat with spice-flour mixture. Brown in the butter/fat in a saucepan with the onions and carrots. Blanch and skin the tomatoes and add towards the end of the browning time.

Add enough water so that it barely covers the ingredients. Simmer over low heat until the kidneys are tender.

At the end, thicken the sauce with some flour paste and add a little cream if desired, to make a smoother sauce. Serve with potatoes.

This dish is also good with mushrooms.

Cookbook review: The Scandinavian Cookbook by Trina Hahnemann

While there are no specifically Icelandic recipes in this book, there are enough dishes in it that have passed into traditional Icelandic cookery (taken from Danish and Norwegian cookbooks of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries) to include it here.

Author Trina Hahnemann has, in co-operation with photographer Lars Ranek, produced a gorgeous tribute to Scandinavian cookery. The book is divided into chapters by month, and each month includes recipes made from local ingredients that are fresh at the given time of year. The recipes, when they aren't pan-Scandinavian, are mostly Danish and Swedish, with some Norwegian ones. My native Iceland isn‘t included, as while the culinary tradition is firmly Scandinavian, the country isn‘t actually a geographical part of Scandinavia. I did find several recipes that are very familiar to me, like fish cakes, gravlax, pickled cucumbers, marinated herring and Christmas pudding, to name a few.

The recipes are a mixture of familiar traditional recipes, variations on the traditional (like fish cakes in curry sauce), and new recipes using traditional Scandinavian ingredients. There are photographs of almost every dish, interspersed with photos of the raw ingredients and cityscapes, landscapes and people, all of them in glorious colour. The abundance of photographs means that this is not just a recipe collection, but actually a gorgeous coffee-table book as well. The recipes are, for the most part, easy to make, and most of the ingredients easy to find, although substitutions may sometimes have to be made, e.g. if one can‘t get hold of moose, reindeer or flounder.

At the back of the book there is a handy glossary of ingredients and a list of websites that will provide those interested with more information about Scandinavia and its foods. The author is a well-known chef and food writer and already has several cookbooks under her belt, published in her native Denmark.

While I have not yet tested any of the actual recipes given in the book, I have cooked a number of the dishes (from other cookbooks) and tasted several more. There is a good variety of recipes, for appetisers, main courses, soups, desserts, drinks and baked goods, and as I have already mentioned, many of them are ideally suited to the season the chapters cover.

All in all, I think this is a gorgeous cookbook that will give non-Scandinavians a good overview of Scandinavian food and cookery, and the photographs will certainly arouse an interest in visiting the region.

Finally, here is a recipe from the book that I plan to try soon:

Grilled leg of lamb with garlic and tarragon (serves 8)

1 boned leg of lamb
Salt and pepper
10 tarragon sprigs
6 cloves garlic

Heat the grill to medium.

Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste over the leg of lamb, the cover with the tarragon and garlic. Fold up the meat and tie it up with kitchen string to help it keep its shape.

Lay the meat on the grill and close the grill. Cook for about 2 hours, or until an instant read meat thermometer reads 160 to 175°F (70 to 80°C). Take care that the underside of the lamb does not burn.

When the meat is done, let it rest for 10 minutes before carving. Serve with potato salad and green cabbage salad with dill and peas (both are included in the book).

Lifrarpylsa - Liver Sausage (Icelandic “Haggis”)

I made some liver sausage with a friend of mine yesterday. This is a popular Þorri food that is available year round in Iceland. It is the season for making liver and blood sausages right now.

There are many ways of preparing liver, and the following is one method of preparing a good, nutritious meal from lamb's liver. This delicacy has relatives in various other countries. The most famous is do doubt the Scottish Haggis. This is an original traditional recipe. Below the instructions you will find a tip on how to make it lighter and healthier. Pork liver can be substituted for lamb's liver, and beef suet for the mutton suet, but for genuineness, you need lamb's liver and suet.

1 kg lamb's liver
50-100 g flour
approx. 450 g rye flour
750 ml milk
150 g oatmeal
30 g salt
1 kg sheep suet
Sheep's stomachs/tripe (optional), large sausage skins, or cooking bags

Wash and clean the liver and remove all blood vessels and membranes. Mince the liver thoroughly into a paste. Mix with milk and salt and then rye flour, oatmeal and flour (best done using one’s hands). The mixture should be thick. Chop the suet, finely or coarsely, depending on your tastes, and mix with the liver paste. This mixture is traditionally sewn up into sheep's stomachs that have been cut down to size, but sausage skins or plastic bags that are suitable for cooking in can be substituted, and are much quicker. Fill the bags and close them well. One lifrarpylsa should be about the size of a man's clenched fist. They can be made larger or smaller, but the cooking time given is for this size.

Drop the sausages into boiling salted water and cook for 2-2 1/2 hours. Right after the sausages are dropped into the water, it is a good idea to prick them few times with a pin to prevent them from bursting. Turn over occasionally.

Health tip:
To make this healthier, halve the amount of suet you use in the recipe. To keep the paste thick, use 1/3 less milk to begin with, and if it needs more, add a little at a time until you reach the desired thickness.

Serving:
Eat hot with boiled or mashed potatoes, cold with porridge or skyr, or use as topping for bread.
Frying is a good way to use up leftover sausage. You can either brown slices of it in a frying pan with some sugar, or sprinkle some sugar on it before eating. Serve with mashed potatoes.

Liver sausage is often preserved in skyr-whey, along with other traditional foods, such as blood sausage, sheep's head jam and whale blubber. This pickling produces a sour flavour that is definitely an acquired taste. Food preserved in this way is traditionally eaten during the old month of Þorri, at festivals called Þorrablót.

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A personal restaurant review: Jómfrúin

A friend and I meet for lunch a couple of times a month, and recently we decided to try a new restaurant or café once every month, instead of always going to one of the same three places over and over. This month’s choice was Jómfrúin, a Danish-style smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches) restaurant in Lækjargata in the heart of Reykjavík. Neither of us had eaten there before, but I have eaten party food from them on several occasions (at my workplace we sometimes order canapé versions of these bread dishes to serve to special guests).

The place is small and bustling with activity. The environment is in the plain café style, with old Danish advertising posters on the walls, dim lighting and paper tablecloths. The floor is tiled and there was too much noise in there for us to have a quiet conversation. The service was fast, efficient and friendly.

You can get most of the dishes in "full" and "half" portions, which is good, because a full portion is really a meal in itself and there are so many tempting things on the menu that it is nice to be able to order half portions of 2-3 dishes, rather than just one dish.

For variety I decided to order a half-portion of a dish we have never ordered in at work, namely pastrami, and a half-portion of an old favourite, the classic "Shrimp pyramid".

The pastrami was served on French (white) bread, and topped with sauerkraut, Dijon-mustard, a slice of tomato, miniature gherkins and fresh herbs. The pastrami itself was very good and the sauerkraut went well with it, but the Dijon was a bit overpowering considering the mild flavour of the pastrami.

The shrimp pyramid was served on white bread, with Thousand Island sauce on the side and a wedge of lemon to squeeze over the shrimp. The shrimp were overcooked and therefore slightly tough, but tasted good nonetheless.

My friend had a "Bombay": toasted French bread with butter, curried chicken salad, tomato, egg, smoked salmon and caviar, and the classic herring with egg: rye bread topped with butter, spice-pickled herring, egg, tomato, onion and dill. The Bombay was okay, but she did not like the herring, said it was not as good as the herring she had tasted in Denmark (at the original bar where smørrebrød was invented).

All in all, the lunch was a bit disappointing, but I would go there again, and then I would order dishes I know to be excellent: "The Veterinarian's Supper" (liver pate, port aspic, salt pork, onions and dill on rye), roast beef (on rye with tomato, egg, fried onions and remoulade), plaice (on rye with remoulade, shrimp, asparagus, smoked salmon, caviar, and lemon), smoked eel (on rye with scrambled egg, tomato and chives) or ham (on rye with spicy beetroot salad, egg and leek).

The Jómfrúin website. The website is in Icelandic, but the menu is in English as well. To see the menu (with photos of the dishes), click on the link “Aðal matseðill” and to see the choice of hot lunch courses, click on “Heitir réttir í hádeginu”.

In the summer the restaurant offers live jazz from 3 to 5 p.m., out on the patio behind the restaurant.

Þorrablót or Thorrablot (Icelandic midwinter feast)

Þorri begins today, so I moved this post from last year to the top. Here you will find some information about the traditional Icelandic foods eaten at the Þorri feasts. The links will take you to recipes or instructions for making some of these foods.

Þorri is one of the old Icelandic lunar months. It always begins on a Friday, between the 19th and the 25th of January, and ends on a Saturday between the 18th and 24th of February. The first day of Þorri is called Bóndadagur or "Husband's Day/Farmer's Day", and is dedicated to men (formerly only farmers). In my family (and many others) , the women bring the men breakfast in bed on this day - just as the men will do on Konudagur “Woman's Day” (if they know what's good for them). Many women will give their husbands flowers as well. The flowers are a fairly new custom, introduced by flower shops in order to sell more roses. (They are trying import Valentine's Day for the same reason).

The tradition of a Þorri feast is an ancient one. It has its roots in the old midwinter feasts of the pagan era, the Þorrablót, although the way in which it is celebrated has changed. This month falls on the coldest time of the winter, and therefore it is no surprise that Þorri has become a personification of King Winter. He is usually portrayed as an old man, tall and grizzled, who is as cruel to those who disrespect him as he is gentle to those who show him respect. Some have suggested that the month is named after the legendary king who united Norway into one country. Others think it is derived from the name of the thunder-god Þór (Thor), and that this was his feast during the pre-Christian era in Iceland.

Whatever the origin of the feast of Þorri, it is today a standard part of the Icelandic social calendar, and has even been exported to many countries which have ex-pat Icelandic populations, often to the utter dismay of foreign friends and spouses.

The eating habits of the Icelandic nation have changed a lot in the last hundred years or so, and it is only during Þorri that people will eat many of the old-fashioned foods. As this feast takes place in the middle of winter, it is no surprise that most of the food served at the feasts is preserved in some way: by pickling in whey, salting, smoking, drying or fermenting.

A typical Þorrablót takes place at any time during Þorri. The season for it now extends into the following month, Góa, but the feast is then usually dubbed Góugleði. It is advisable to hold it on a Friday or Saturday night, to give the participants time to recover from the effects of overeating and heavy drinking that goes with a good Þorrablót. The form the feast takes is similar everywhere, the indispensable ingredients being merrymaking and lots of food. Additional ingredients are staged entertainment (often a cabaret or revue), dancing and lots of alcohol.

The traditional method of serving the food in deep wooden trays is these days usually only extended as far as the buffet, ordinary plates taking their place at the table, and cutlery taking the place of the traditional sharp knife and the diner's bare hands.


Menu for Þorrablót,
comments courtesy of your host.

Traditional Appetizers:

Hákarl:
Shark, served in small cubes. It is prepared by burying it for several weeks, and then hanging it up and allowing it to dry. The semi-opaque flesh of the belly is called glerhákarl (glassy shark), and is not nearly as popular as the skyrhákarl, which is flesh from the body of the fish. Skyrhákarl draws its name from its resemblance in appearance to the Icelandic curds called skyr. The tough glerhákarl is recommended for beginners, as the soft skyrhákarl has been known to cause an involuntary gagging reaction due to its texture. Wash down with a shot of cold Brennivín (caraway schnapps). Believe it or not, this is actually good for the digestion - especially before eating the heavy Þorri food.

Harðfiskur:
Dried fish, usually haddock, cod or catfish, beaten to soften it. Delicious with or without butter. In olden times harðfiskur was eaten like bread in those homes that could only afford flour for baking on special occasions. It is still Iceland's favourite snack, and a popular travel food. (Chances are, if you meet an Icelander and he has a funny smell about him, it will be because of the harðfiskur tucked away in his luggage).

Modern Entrées:
At many Þorri feasts there is now offered a wide variety of entrées, usually food that can be found in a typical Scandinavian Julefrokost (Christmas buffet): marinated herring (both plain and in several different kinds of sauce), smoked salmon and
Click this thumbnail to see full size image.
gravlax.



Main courses:
This is where the menu begins to get really interesting. Almost everything you find on a typical Þorri buffet is made from lamb or mutton, with a few exceptions. The food can be separated into two categories: sour and non-sour. The sour food has been pickled in extra strong skyrmysa (whey) for several weeks. The trick is to get it sour enough to tell where it's been, but not so sour that you can't tell what it is. Most of the sour food is also served non-sour. In the old days, sour milk was sometimes uses instead of mysa.

Sour only:
Hrútspungar or pressed sheep's testicles. Has little taste of it's own, and a texture reminiscent of pressed cod roe.
Hvalspik or whale blubber. This became hard to find after the parliament passed a law forbidding whaling several years ago. It has made a small comeback recently, due to the whaling ban being lifted. Fresh whale blubber is stringy and tough, but pickling it makes it soft and more digestible.
Lundabaggar - This is a tough one to explain - it is made from secondary meats, like colons and other such stuff, rolled up, boiled, pickled and sliced. Usually very fatty.
Bringukollar - breast meat. These are cuts of really fat meat on the bone, which have been boiled before pickling. As the name suggests, these pieces come from the breast of the animal.
Selshreifar - seal's flippers. These are rare, except at some family feasts where the participants have hunted the seals themselves.
Hvalllíki or fake whale blubber. This was invented after the whaling ban. It is made from fish, and has a colour and texture reminiscent of the real thing, but an entirely different taste. Has become a Þorri staple for many, and is by some preferred over the real thing. I think that now whale blubber is available, this will probably disappear soon, unless whaling stops again.
Click on the thumbnail to see full size image:




Sour and non-sour:
Slátur. Of this there are two types: Lifrarpylsa or liver sausage and Blóðmör or blood sausage. Both are cooked before pickling. Both are quite good when fresh, but take on wholly different taste when pickled, which people either love or loathe (I happen to like it). Both contain rye meal, which contributes to the souring process and creates a special kind of taste that's hard to describe. Both are quite firm when fresh, but will take on a crumbly texture after extended pickling. These can actually be pickled in water or milk, as the rye meal causes a souring action similar to whey.
Sviðasulta - sheep's head jam (headcheese). This is quite good when pickled, and delicious fresh. It is made by cutting up the meat from cooked sheep's heads (svið), pressing into moulds and cooling. The cooking liquid turns into jelly when cold, and keeps the whole thing together.
Svínasulta, or spiced pigs' head jam/headcheese. A recent addition to the Þorri table, probably borrowed from the Danish. Tastes much better fresh than pickled.
Lappir and/or Fótasulta - sheep's legs and sheep's leg jam. This is a rare sight, both due to the effort it takes to produce the jam, and the fact that the slaughterhouses are required to throw the legs away. Therefore only available where people do their own butchering.*

*The must have changed the regulations - you can now get legs at my local supermarket.

Non-sour:
Hangikjöt - Literally "hung meat". This usually refers to smoked lamb or mutton, although smoked horse-meat is also called hangikjöt. This is one of those courses that are eaten outside the Þorri season as well, and is really delicious.
Magálar - heavily smoked sheep's bellies. Eaten like hangikjöt.
Svið - singed sheep's heads. The name refers to the tradition of burning away all the hair from the head before cooking. This gives the meat a smoky flavour. The heads are cut in half lengthwise and the brains removed before cooking. Like hangikjöt, this is also quite a popular dish outside the Þorri season.

Side dishes:
Kartöflustappa - mashed potatoes. This hopefully needs no explanation. Recipe will be posted at some later date.
Rófustappa - mashed rutabagas. These are boiled until soft, mashed and sweetened with sugar.
Flatbrauð - flat bread, served with butter.
rúgbrauð - rye bread. Dark (almost black) "thunder-bread" served with butter. Top with pickled herring for an entrée, eat on the side with the main courses.

Drinks:
Brennivín - caraway schnapps, locally known as Svartidauði - "Black Death". These days many people will rather drink vodka and/or whisky - which they claim tastes better.
Mysa - whey. Yes, it can also be drunk. Before the arrival of carbonated beverages, this was the refreshment of choice. Unfortunately, it is not much used as a drink anymore. The taste? It is reminiscent of dry white wine, and mysa can actually be used instead of white wine in cooking, without anyone noticing the difference.
Bjór - beer and its relatives, Malt (non-alcoholic brown ale) and Lageröl (pale ale). During the beer-less years (several decades), the only ale allowed in Iceland was the low-alcohol Malt and Lageröl. Since we have been allowed to drink beer again, it has become "the drink" for many at Þorrablót feasts. These days you can even buy special Þorri beer.
Soft drinks - for those who don't like ale or strong spirits.

Stuff that is sometimes served, but strictly speaking is not traditional:
Many people, especially young people, don't like the Þorri food, but like to participate in the Þorrablót. In order to accommodate these people, non-Þorri food is sometimes served (especially at restaurants). Therefore we now have:
Þorri chicken - grilled Þorri steak - Þorri pizza, and other such stuff.

Afterword:
Every year, I hear people, especially young people and those who like to consider themselves cosmopolitans, grumbling about the Þorri feasts. They go on about the food being horrible and the tradition outdated and cheesy, and ask why we should eat all this horrible, fattening preserved food (which must be horrible to everyone because they don’t like it) when we can get it fresh. In my opinion, they should count themselves lucky to have been born in the 20th century, when they at least have a choice as to what they eat, a luxury our ancestors didn't have. The old-fashioned food of today is much healthier than the same kind of food used to be. Here I am not just referring to the traditional Þorri food, but also for example to sour and mouldy butter, rotting meat and bread with lots of extra proteins due to maggots and insects in the flour. Many people had no choice but to eat this kind of food, or else starve.

Icelandic liver patties - Lifrarbuff

It's the season when fresh offal is to be had in every self-respecting supermarket, and liver is one of the things I enjoy at this time of year. My mother used to make Lifrarbuff fairly often when I was a kid.

500 g. lamb's liver 1/2 - 1 cup flour
1 egg 3 ea. potatoes, raw
1/2 - 1 cup milk 2 medium onions
1/2 tsp baking powder to taste salt, pepper and/or other favourite spice

Remove all membranes and blood vessels from the liver and peel the potatoes. Peel onions and chop coarsely. Mince together liver, potatoes and onions. Mix in flour, baking powder and spices. Add the egg. Thin the mixture with milk until it is the consistency of porridge.
Drop the mixture by the tablespoonful on a hot frying pan and fry on both sides until firm. Serve with butter-fried onion rings, mashed potatoes, green peas and rhubarb jam. Fried eggs are also good with this dish.

Fried sheep's hearts

Slaughter season is in full swing in Iceland. This means that besides lowered prices for fresh unfrozen lamb, mutton and horse meat, you can also get fresh offal, which is not only cheap, but also nutritious and often quite yummy. While it is generally possible to get these products fresh year round now, it is more usual to find them frozen and when fresh they tend to cost more off season because there is less supply. This is also the only time of the year when you can get fresh sheep's blood to make blood sausages.

In the next week or so I am going to revisit some offal recipes I have published here in the past, but I am going to start with a recipe I haven't published before: Fried sheep's hearts.

2-3 sheep's hearts, or 1-2 pig's hearts
1 bunch parsley
1 tbs butter or margarine
50 g margarine or butter
1 tsp salt
300 ml water or milk
2 tbs flour
100 ml cold water

Wash the hearts well under cold running water until there is no blood left in them. Soak in cold water for a while. Dry inside and out with a cloth. Chop the parsley and mix well with the 50 g of butter and stuff the hearts with this mixture. Melt the 1 tsp. of butter and brown the hearts in it. Put the hearts in a cooking pot, add milk or water and salt. Cook for 30 to 60 minutes. Small hearts need less cooking and if the hearts come from an old sheep they need longer cooking.

Remove the hearts. Make a paste out of flour and cold water and use it to make gravy from the cooking liquid.

To make gravy, strain the cooking liquid into a small saucepan and bring it to the boil. When it is boiling, you add the flour paste, stirring constantly. It takes a bit of experience to know when to stop adding the paste – just pour it in slowly and stir the gravy with a whisk and when you feel it getting thicker, you stop pouring the paste. Then cook it for a couple of minutes to get rid of the raw flour taste, and adjust the flavour with salt and spices and if you think it looks too pale, add a couple of drops of gravy colouring.

Slice the hearts and arrange on a serving dish. Pour a little of the gravy over them. Serve with cooked or mashed potatoes and cooked vegetables with the sauce on the side.

The hearts can also be stuffed with prunes and dried apples or browned mushrooms, in which case they need to be sewn closed, OR they can be cut into 6-8 strips, in which case they only need 30 minutes of cooking.

Icelandic cookbooks in English: Delicious Iceland: Tales of unique northern delicacies

If you enjoy gorgeous photography, haute cuisine and chefs on ego trips, this is a book for you. It also happens to be quite informative about Icelandic food and traditional ingredients.


The book is too big for my scanner,
so I had to borrow an image of the cover from another website.
It is therefore not quite as large as I would have liked.

This prizewinning food book (honorary Gourmand Cookbook Award, 2007) was written by Chef Völundur Snær Völundarson, assisted by Haukur Ágústsson, with photographs by Hreinn Hreinsson, and published by Salka (Iceland), in 2006.

This is a heavy, large format book, more suitable for the coffee table than the kitchen. It combines the subjects of Iceland and cooking, with gorgeous photographs of Icelandic nature, people and food, and text about the same. The recipes are original and were conceived by the author to showcase how Icelandic ingredients can be used in fine cooking.

The author is very central to the book. He writes of his personal experiences and memories connected with food, and he is featured in many of the photographs, doing things like trout fishing, rappelling down a cliff to get seabird eggs, sculpting ice or cooking over hot lava.

There are short chapters on many traditional foods and ingredients, and there is even a chapter (with photos) on the old Þorri food.

While the recipes are all of the kind you could expect to be served in fine restaurants, it doesn’t follow that they are unsuitable for home cooking.

The recipes are heavy on fish and other seafood, but there are also meat recipes, and recipes for desserts.

Examples of recipes:
Creamed sea urchin soup
Fried tern eggs in tempura with aioli, micro basil and garlic roots
Smoked salmon with blini cakes, horseradish cream and trout roes
Cold smoked scallops with vodka jelly, scallion marmalade and Osetra caviar
Sautéed wolf fish in Parma ham and spinach with tomato and scallion risotto
Iceland moss curds
Red wine braised lamb shank with semolina cake
Nut-crusted fillet of reindeer with morel sauce and beet root sauce
Skyr topped with blueberries (one of the handful of traditional recipes in the book)
Brennivín baba


Verdict:
The landscape photography and chapters on traditional food make this a good souvenir of Iceland. There are only a handful of traditional recipes in it, so if you are a foodie looking for traditional or even just typical Icelandic food, this is not the book for you. If, however, you are a food lover and love to cook restaurant-style food and you are not particularly looking for specifically traditional recipes or home cooking, but merely something inspired by Iceland, this book is a good choice, and it would make a gorgeous gift.


Cost:
At the time of writing, Delicious Iceland costs 5620 kr. in the Penninn book store. There is a baby version that I could not review, that costs 2990 kr.

Practical information:
The measurements are given in cups and spoons.

The book has no index.

Icelandic cookbooks in English: Cool Dishes and Cool Cuisine

There are a number of Icelandic cookbooks available in English, most of them published in Iceland and aimed at the tourist market. Most are printed on heavy, glossy paper and some have gorgeous colour photographs in them, both of which makes them expensive. Buying one for the equivalent of 50 US Dollars or more and then discovering it isn't what you were looking for is an expensive mistake. Therefore I decided to review as many of them as I could get my hands on, to make it a little easier to decide which one to invest in.

Not all of the Icelandic cookbooks in the book stores are available from the library. I will stick to the ones I could get from the library, as I have been able to read them all the way through.

First up are Cool Cuisine and Cool Dishes, which is a baby version of the former. They were written by Icelandic food writer Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir, with photographs by Gísli Egill Hrafnsson and published by Vaka-Helgafell in 2004.







These books combine gorgeous food photography with Icelandic recipes, most of which are traditional, although some are more traditional than others. By that I mean that there are recipes in the books that go back over a century, side by side with recipes that are less than 20 years old. A few are new, inspired by Icelandic raw materials.

You can't go wrong with these books as souvenirs for yourself or as gifts for a true food lover. Unlike some of the other Icelandic cookbooks I looked at, they are purely about the food, and are representative of what Icelanders really eat. You will not find fermented shark in there, nor sheep's heads or pressed sheep's testicles, but some of the old traditional food is in there, like smoked lamb (only how to cook it, not how to smoke it) blood pudding and halibut soup with prunes.

Cool Cuisine is 147 pages long and has some 92 recipes, more if you count separately the dishes that come with recipes for side dishes.

Cool Dishes is 72 pages and the recipes number 42. All the recipes in this book are found in the other, and all of what I would call the 'necessary' recipes are in this one.

Verdict:
Of the Icelandic cookbooks I have been looking at, these two are definitely the best buys if you are looking for nice foodie coffee table books that are still useful as cookbooks.

Cost:
I checked the prices in the Penninn book store, which are representative of the prices you can expect to pay for these books. They may cost more in tourist shops.

As of the time of writing Cool Cuisine costs 2290 kr. and Cool Dishes costs 920 kr.

Practical information:
All the measurements in the books are in metric, including the teaspoons and tablespoons, and the temperatures are given in centigrade (Celcius).

A really satisfying meal

A meal I had last year at one of Iceland's fancier (and most expensive) restaurants, where perfectly done beef was served with braised veal that was well on its way to becoming pâté and had an incredible richness of flavour, reminded me of all the times when, as a child and well into my teens, I would stalk the pot when my mother was making lamb pâté and try to nab a little morsel of braised meat that had been cooked for so long that it was beginning to separate into string-like pieces, each bursting with the flavour of meat, onions and salt and saturated with the special flavour braising gives to meat. Unfortunately for the restaurant, the comparison was not in their favour, because while the braised veal – I think they called it veal mousse although I am relatively sure that neither cream, eggs nor gelatin were involved – had a wonderful, rich flavour, it had a mushy, nasty texture that made it impossible to eat it by itself - you needed a piece of beef, vegetable or potato to hide the texture.

A little later I bought a shoulder of lamb and used a couple of pieces to cook vegetable-lamb soup. After the hour it takes to make the soup, the meat was tough and flavourless and I decided I was probably going to end up making pâté from what remained. But yesterday when I was reading Ruth Reichl's book Garlic and Sapphires, the chapter on beef gave me a hankering after meat, and I remembered the braised veal and lamb. I now decided to try to recapture that fascinating, rich flavour, along with the right texture. I had braised meat many times but never taken it to the stage where it begins to fall apart, so this was a first for me.

I started rooting around in the freezer, rejected some cutlets I found, knowing I could get them cooked and tasting good in about 30 minutes, whereas the lamb shoulder, which I dug up next, would be perfect for braising. I took two pieces and put them in the fridge to thaw, then when I came home today I got them out, cut them down to a size that would fit into the smaller of my soup pots, browned them at high heat in a frying pan and flavoured them with salt and pepper, then dumped them into the soup pot with a quartered onion and little bit of water. Once it was boiling merrily I lowered the heat so that it would barely keep simmering, put the lid on and started the timer.

After 20 minutes I opened the pot, saw there was too much liquid and poured off some of it into a jar. Every 20 minutes I checked on the pot and pulled the bottom piece of meat out and put it on top to allow all the meat to wallow in the increasingly flavourful broth, which I replenished from the jar whenever it was in danger of boiling off. After an hour I decided there was some flavour note missing from the broth, so I added a sliced carrot and a bit more salt.

At the 70 minute mark I took the meat and cut it into smaller pieces and returned it to the pot with the bones. I started cooking the potatoes around the 80 minute mark and decided that I needed a second side dish to serve with the meat, so I got out some white cabbage which I sliced into ribbons. When the potatoes were cooked, I got them out and mashed them, adding milk, butter, sugar and a pinch of salt, and then put them aside.

It was now time to start browning the meat. I poured off the broth which by now could well be called stock, so rich and concentrated had it become, turned up the heat to medium and put some butter into the pot, as the meat was rather lean and there was hardly any fat on it to use for the browning. I also put some into a frying pan for the cabbage.

While the butter in the pan melted and got up to the right temperature, I coated the meat in butter and listened to hear the sizzling begin. I dumped the cabbage into the frying pan and stirred it to get it coated with butter, then turned back to the meat. This I stirred to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot and tore it apart with the edge of the wooden spoon and a fork while it browned. To make sure it wouldn't burn or dry out, I occasionally added a spoonful of the stock. At this stage I was taking turns stirring the meat and the cabbage.

When the smell of cooking cabbage began to rise from the pan, I added couple of dashes of maple syrup to it (you need to be very careful with the maple syrup as too much ruins the dish) and a pinch of salt to counteract the syrup's sweetness. I stirred the cabbage to coat with the syrup and then removed it from the heat. Then I finished browning the meat, which was now beginning to take on a caramel colour and looked like my mother's pâté meat does right before she puts it into the grinder. The onions had been completely mashed up and absorbed by the meat, but carrot pieces were still visible as tiny morsels of bright orange among the browned meat. I added the final spoonful of broth, gave it a stir, picked out the bones (carefully licking each before discarding it) and then dumped the meat onto a plate, added the mashed potatoes and the cabbage.

And how did it taste? The mashed potatoes were creamy and mild with a hint of butter, the meat was rich and soft with just the right amount of saltiness and a hint of pepper, but the cabbage was a bit bold – which was surprising as raw it had little flavour – but it was perfectly al dente and after the first explosion of flavour it had just the right amount of sweetness and a mild taste of maple to counteract the first big taste shock. I think the most exquisite moment of the meal came when the liquid from the cabbage – equal amounts cabbage juice, butter and maple syrup – seeped into the meat and was absorbed into it, adding a hint of sweetness to it to complement its rich and slightly salty braised flavour. In other words: it was a very, very good meal, in the way only food cooked at home with love and care can be.

I am just hoping the mashed potatoes will prevent me from getting heartburn, but even if I do, it will have been worth it.