The evening before, boil the potatoes in a pot of salted water and peel the finished jacket potatoes while they are warm and, depending on the size of the potatoes, cut them into pieces about the size of a walnut. Then chill.
The next day, melt the sugar in a large pan until it turns brown (stirring occasionally!), then add the butter and let it melt too.
Then add the cold jacket potato pieces to the pan and stir until the potatoes are completely caramelized and hot.
Alternatively, you can use an appropriate amount of cream or condensed milk instead of butter or replace half of the butter with 2 tablespoons of cold coffee.
The caramelized potatoes, together with white sauce and green peas (but replaced with spinach in the picture) are the classic side dish to a typical Icelandic Sunday roast.
Rinse the leg of lamb under fresh water and pat dry thoroughly.
Put the diced onion and the chopped garlic clove in the roasting pan, add the leg of lamb and rub vigorously with the onions and garlic. Season with salt and pepper and add the fresh coriander.
Place in the preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) in the closed roaster for 20 minutes.
After the 20 minutes, add about 0.5 liters of water, then put it back in the oven with the lid at about 350 °F (175 °C) for at least 1.5 hours. During this time, take it out from time to time and pour the mixture of water and gravy over the leg of lamb.
Then skim off some of the liquid from the roasting pan for the sauce, pour off the rest and place the leg of lamb - this time without the lid - in the oven again at 350 °F (175 °C) for about 30 minutes to brown.
To make the sauce, first melt some butter in a pot, dust it with flour and stir it in, then slowly add the liquid skimmed from the roasting pan, stir vigorously and then bring to the boil briefly. For consistency, add a dash of cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Traditionally, the finished, sliced leg of lamb is served with the white sauce, caramelized potatoes and green peas - the typical Icelandic Sunday meal.
Melt the butter in the second pot, then dust the flour over it and stir vigorously. Slowly and gradually add the hot meat broth and stir it in, then bring to the boil briefly. Stir the chopped chervil into the soup and let it cook a little more.
Peel the hard-boiled eggs, quarter them and serve with the finished kerfilsúpa.
Original food photo from 2014
Alternatively, I lined a muffin tin with slices of bacon, added a raw egg and then baked the whole thing in the oven for a good 10 minutes. Looks nice and tastes very tasty too!
Bláberjabaka, or “blueberry pastry”, actually a kind of frozen blueberry cake, is an extremely delicious dessert!
Ingredients
Ingredients for the springform pan/cake base
100 g butter
130 g rusks
40 g chopped nuts
40 g sugar
Ingredients for the egg white topping
2 egg whites
1 pinch of salt
40 g sugar
Ingredients for the blueberry cream
250 g cream cheese
50 g sour cream
250 g blueberries
125 g sugar
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 400 °F (200 °C).
Melt about 100 g butter. Crumble the rusks finely, for example in a breakfast bag with a rolling pin, then put the rusks in a bowl and mix thoroughly with the melted butter, the chopped nuts and 40 g sugar. Place in a springform pan lined with baking paper and press firmly with a small edge. Bake in the oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for almost 10 minutes, then turn off the oven and let the base cool outside the oven.
Separate the eggs.
Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and 40 g sugar to form egg whites.
Mix the egg yolks with the cream cheese, sour cream and 125 g sugar, then fold in the blueberries and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon.
Then put the blueberry cream on the pre-baked cake base, smooth it out and top it loosely with the beaten egg whites.
Then bake the whole thing in the (again preheated) oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for a good 10 minutes, then turn off the oven and let the Bláberjabaka cool down in the oven.
Then freeze the cake in the freezer.
Take the blueberry cake out of the freezer and let it thaw about an hour before eating.
Bon appetit!!
The most impressive thing about this cake for me (besides the slightly frozen consistency when eaten) is also the relatively small number of ingredients, which I find to be “typically Icelandic” - relatively few ingredients, but then a lot of good, interesting taste!
Well, the combination of fish with blueberries and a large load of onions and garlic seems quite unusual at first glance - but young Icelandic cuisine likes to try out unusual things and put traditional local products together in a new taste context.
Blueberries, bláberja, are a popular, typically Icelandic product that can be found almost everywhere on the island's heathland - so it can happen that in the local museum the nice museum guard unexpectedly offers you a bowl of delicious fresh blueberries, which she had collected in the morning on the way to work. And there are also plenty of salmon rivers (“laxá”) and the associated salmon river valleys (“laxárdalur”) in Iceland - with correspondingly many salmon, of course.
Ingredients for 2 servings
1 salmon half (with skin)
200 g blueberries
1 clove of garlic
1 onion
1 cm ginger
1 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp chopped basil
salt and pepper
Preparation
First, peel the onion and cut it into small pieces and grate the garlic clove and ginger (freshly grated ginger simply tastes more intense than plain ginger spice!). Then heat some butter in a pan for the marinade, add the blueberries with the grated garlic, ginger and onions with a little lime juice, balsamic vinegar and basil and simmer for a few minutes. Let the marinade cool briefly and then puree it.
Place the salmon half with the skin side down on a suitable tray, spread some of the marinade (not too thick!) and let it sit in the fridge for several hours.
Then preheat the oven to 475 °F (250 °C) and cook the salmon, skin side down, in the oven at this temperature for 10 to 15 minutes.
Then dress the salmon with the remaining marinade and, as is traditional, serve with vegetables and potatoes.
Cinnamon rolls are apparently a typically northern European specialty; you can find them as “kanilsnúðar” in Iceland, as “kanelsneklen” in Norway or as “kanelbullar” in Sweden (or at Ikea). In Sweden, Kanelbullens dag, “Cinnamon Roll Day”, has been celebrated every year on October 4th since 1999 - probably to the delight of the local baking industry.
It is said that in Iceland it used to be common practice when inviting people to a coffee party that the visitor was allowed to eat at least one of the quite filling cinnamon rolls before helping themselves to the delicious cakes or other pastries.
Here is a recipe version for the “kanilsnúðar”, which is very popular with my children and is generally also suitable for people with lactose intolerance:
Ingredients
850 g spelled flour type 650
1 tsp salt
150 g brown sugar
1 pack of dry yeast
500 ml lukewarm oat milk
150 g melted margarine
some flour for the work surface
filling
90 g brown sugar
20 g cinnamon
8g cardamom
Preparation
If possible, mix the dry ingredients thoroughly in a metal bowl with a wooden spoon, then add the melted butter and lukewarm oat milk and mix the whole thing into a smooth dough. Then cover well with a clean tea towel and place the bowl in hot water, traditionally in the plugged sink - but be careful that the bowl doesn't tip over! Let the yeast dough rise in the warmth for at least half an hour.
Then take the dough out of the bowl in portions, knead it well again and then roll it out into a square about 1 cm thick on a work surface dusted with flour.
For the filling, mix the sugar, cinnamon and cardamom vigorously and sprinkle the rolled out dough with it.
Then roll up the dough from the top edge and then cut the dough roll into slices about 1 cm thick.
Bake in a preheated oven at around 350 °F (180 °C) for a good 20 minutes until the cinnamon rolls are pleasantly browned.
Photo from 2014
I usually make around 40 small cinnamon rolls per recipe, which keep well in an airtight container for several days - if the children haven't eaten them long before!
Brennivín, meaning “brandy”, is “the original Icelandic schnapps”.
The liquor is sometimes also called “svarti dauði”, or “Black Death”.
Brennivín is the most famous Icelandic (alcoholic) drink and is said to make some special Icelandic specialties such as Hákarl bearable for “average Europeans”.
Brennivín is made from fermented potatoes and flavored with caraway. It has 37.5% alcohol content by volume.
It is said that the typical black label on the bottles was originally intended to deter people from buying the strong alcohol - but that obviously didn't work and has now long since become a trademark: an ÁTVR logo was shown in a circle in front of the silhouette of the island - ÁTVR is the state-owned alcohol sales company in Iceland.
From 1935, after the end of the general beer ban in Iceland, Brennivín was initially produced by the Vífilfell company until the 1990s. Today the brewery Egill Skallagrimsson Ltd., which also belongs to ÁTVR, produces Brennivín.
Prohibition in Iceland
In Iceland there was initially a total ban on alcohol from 1915. From 922 onwards, wine was allowed to be imported again; from 1934 onwards the prohibition only applied to strong beers with more than 2.25% alcohol.
On March 1st, 1989, the beer ban was completely lifted in Iceland after 74 years - since then, Icelanders have traditionally celebrated their “ bjórdagurinn” on March 1st“Beer Day”.
Skyr is a very special, typically Icelandic dairy product - it can be compared to a mixture of quark and thick yoghurt, at least it goes in that direction.
In the past, each farm made its own skyr - the milk was first boiled to kill the bacteria, then cooled down to to about 100 °F (38 °C) and then some finished skyr or usually rennet was added as a natural bacterial culture. Since Skyr is made from skimmed milk, it has a very low fat content of around 0.2-0.5%
In the past, people traditionally ate their Skyr with freshly picked blueberries, dressed with a little milk and sugar, but today Skyr can be bought in very different flavors (e.g. strawberries, bananas, fruit jelly, etc.) and there is also delicious drinking Skyr, so to speak a kind of “drinking yogurt”.
The main production facility is the Icelandic dairy headquarters in Selfoss. The MS Selfossi dairy, founded here in 1929, is the oldest and largest dairy in the country. By the way, Selfoss is located in a very earthquake-prone zone, even by Icelandic standards. The city was almost completely destroyed in the great earthquake of 1896, and the last two earthquakes in May 2008, with magnitudes of 6.1 and 6.3 on the Richter scale, again caused considerable damage; there were injuries, but fortunately no deaths .
The collapse of the old suspension bridge over the Ölfusá from 1890 was not due to the earthquakes, but rather due to the load of two milk wagons, which were too much for the old bridge.
PS: The eighth of the thirteen Icelandic Christmas companions, the Jolasveinar, is Skyrjármur (in English the “skyr glutton”). He comes to the farms on December 19th, steals people's Skyr from the barrels and returns on January 1st back to the mountains.
Svið is a traditional Icelandic dish - basically using up leftovers in Icelandic.
The fresh sheep's head, which is produced when the animals are slaughtered, is "cooked" with a Bunsen burner and thus "scorched black" until the fur is gone. Half sheep's heads can be found in the freezer section of almost every supermarket in Iceland.
The half sheep's head is then scrubbed vigorously with a brush under cold running water until the black outer layer is removed and then boiled in salt water for 1 to 1 ½ hours.
Traditionally, Svið is eaten with boiled potatoes and turnips - and the feast is ready. The eyes in particular are considered a tasty specialty.
Svið is also a good highlight when scaring tourists at Þorrablót.
According to reports from the Middle Ages, the Icelanders are said to have exported their "dried fish" as a specialty as early as 1300, particularly to Spain and Italy. The "riches of the island of Iceland" therefore consisted of "dried fish" that were collected in such quantities by the inhabitants there would say that the fish mountains were “bigger than houses”. Well, Sebastian Münster, the chronicler of the “Cosmographia”, who died of the plague in Basel in 1552, had never been to Iceland himself, and his authors also gave him some other bears (such as the story that ground harðfiskur was used as flour in Iceland). Substitute would be used), but the large quantities of dried fish exported still seem credible - it is still an important export commodity for the island today.
As for the substitute flour story - in Iceland today Harðfiskur is still popularly spread thickly with butter and then eaten, perhaps the medieval visitors simply misunderstood this and thought that Harðfiskur was a type of Icelandic bread.
For the Harðfiskur, the fish that was caught and killed was caught and scrubbed/scraped vigorously, then the head was removed and the fish was usually filleted. The fish fillets were then briefly dipped in brine and then hung up to dry in an airy place - the wind will drive away any flies! The duration of the drying time depended on the wind, the air temperature and the humidity. The dried fish fillets were then "softened" with a hammer or a noodle knife (in the interests of the later eaters' teeth!) and then eaten with butter.
I was told that the Harðfiskur that you can buy in the store these days is usually manufactured industrially and in appropriate heating chambers.
Incidentally, stockfish and harðfiskur are not the same thing, although they are often confused - stockfish / dried fish is not filleted and dries more slowly, and it also needs to be beaten a lot more before it is soft enough to be safe to eat.
By the way, the fish that you can still admire as a tourist to Iceland on huge racks in the uninhabited expanses of the Reykjanes peninsula are not filleted Harðfiskur, these fish are only gutted here, but dried with their heads in the country's fresh air - both in the summer as well as in winter.
For many Icelanders, their Harðfiskur is a kind of snack, like chips or popcorn in this country, traditionally thickly spread with salty butter, but there are also various recipes, such as braised Harðfiskur with potatoes or fish mousse with crabs.
Harðfiskur is high in protein, vitamins and iron and is therefore particularly popular as a light provisions on strenuous hikes.
"Kæstur hákarl", simply called "hákarl" for short (and pronounced "Howkartl"), translates roughly as "rotten shark" and is fermented shark meat from the Arctic or Greenland shark (which is the same thing).
This shark is on average 4 to 5 meters long and weighs around 400 kg, although animals over 7 meters long and weighing a good 1,400 kg have also been found. The shark species is one of the longest-lived vertebrates on earth; the animals can live over 200 years. As far as is known, as hunters they feed primarily on fish and seals, both at great and relatively shallow sea depths. Incidentally, there are no known attacks on people.
The sharks have no kidneys and therefore accumulate urea in their blood, which they need to balance the osmotic pressure of seawater. Fresh ice shark is therefore poisonous to humans and must therefore be fermented before consumption:
The caught shark is killed, then gutted, washed and cleaned and deboned. The shark meat is then buried in a pit with gravel, weighed down with heavy stones and then left to rot for 6 to 12 weeks, depending on the weather. Finally, the shark meat is hung in an open drying hut for about two to four months so that the ammonia released during rotting can evaporate. The crust is then removed and the white meat is served in small, bite-sized pieces.
It has a consistency like bacon, tastes a lot of getting used to and smells phenomenal. Eating Hákarl for the first time in your life is an elementary experience both in terms of smell and taste and the purest “taste explosion” with the first real bite - and for many people it remains a unique experience.
Brennivin, a typical Icelandic liquor, is usually served with it, probably to make the Hákarl more bearable or to mask the smell.
The fish meat is also often used in dried form as dog food.
There are reports that consumption of insufficiently rotted shark has caused the metabolic disease trimethylaminuria, the so-called “fish odor disease,” in humans. The disease actually exists; in affected patients, the sweat and urine smell blatantly like “old fish” because the excreted body fluids contain extremely high amounts of trimethylamine, and you stink practically from every pore. With medication and diet, the smell can at least be reduced so that a certain level of participation in social life is still possible. To what extent this disease is caused by a gene mutation in the liver or whether eating shark meat containing ammonia can actually lead to this disease - I don't know.
We really hope to be able to visit the Bjarnarhöfn Shark Museum in Snæfellsnes National Park this summer with the drying racks for the shark meat!
The Þorrablót is an ancient Nordic sacrificial festival that was celebrated in the month of Þorri (now around mid-January to mid-February). Literally translated, Þorrablot means something like “blood (sacrifice) in the month of Þorri”. Þorri is the last winter month in the Old Icelandic calendar, the "drought month" - the month in which all supplies were finally used up and there was nothing new and fresh to eat.
The pre-Christian tradition of Þorrablot was revived in Iceland in the 19th century and is now part of Icelandic folk culture. The festival is celebrated very festively with many customs, including by Icelandic associations abroad. For example, the Þorrablóts of the Icelandic community in Hamburg are said to be quite legendary...
The traditional Icelandic dishes at Þorrablót are served on special wooden plates or platters with a hollow in the middle, on which the “Þorramatur” is served.
At a Þorrablót meal, various hearty, traditional Icelandic dishes are typically served, such as hangikjöt, lamb smoked in sheep dung smoke, pickled ram testicles (súrsaðir hrútspungar), singed sheep's heads ( svið ), ...
...but also blood sausage and liver sausage (blóðmör and lifrarpylsa), seal fins, harðfiskur (dry fish) and Hákarl , the fermented ice shark, as well as various traditional Icelandic breads. And of course plenty of Brennivín , the “original Icelandic schnapps”.
Iceland is located “at the end of the world”, the country is rough and inhospitable and has only been inhabited by humans for almost 1,200 years. Summers are short and bright, winters are long and dark.
Iceland is the largest volcanic island in the world and lies just south of the Arctic Circle - so growing grain and vegetables was hardly possible in Iceland for a long time. There are now beautiful greenhouses powered by geothermal energy where tomatoes and bananas grow and which shine brightly in the landscape in winter, and there are now also grain fields - especially in the south of the island - but flour is more of a " "new" invention - previously only wealthy Icelanders could occasionally afford imported flour, sometimes flour was replaced by ground moss... also an experience.
The first settlers had to bring farm animals with them themselves - and you also had to bring enough food for the first animals (otherwise you would end up like Flóki Vilgerðarson, one of the first settlers, whose sheep all starved to death in the first winter on Iceland due to a lack of hay).
Even though the people in Iceland used everything that was at least edible, the original diet there was still very meager.
In the traditional cuisine of Iceland you mainly find turnips, cabbage, wild rhubarb, dock and various types of berries - as well as animal products, and everything that was edible was eaten. In addition to the meat of the sheep, people also ate (and eat) their feet, their testicles and their heads (the eyes are said to be particularly tasty). In Iceland, people eat shark, whale and seal meat, and what is not edible is made edible - like the famous Hákarl, the fermented Greenland shark. A specialty are also puffins and their eggs, which were essential to the survival of many people, especially in spring, when supplies were finally running low and nothing new was growing again.
Preserving meat and other foods was also important for survival in the long winters - by smoking, curing, drying, salting, pickling in sour milk and also fermenting. A classic Icelandic smoking process is also based on dried, pressed sheep dung with hay in between, which is unfortunately not permitted within the EU - which is why many Icelandic specialties such as hangikjöt (smoked lamb) are not allowed to be sold out of Iceland.
Classic Icelandic cuisine - for obvious reasons - hardly had any spices; instead, berries, herbs such as thyme and chervil, or salty seaweed were used.
Today's Icelandic tourist can experience and taste the original Icelandic cuisine first hand, especially when visiting a Þorrablot - if they dare. :-)
This Gulrótarkaka has become established in our family and I feel like I bake it at least once a month, often at the special request of my daughter.
Nowadays I like to vary it, sometimes I bake the dough in two springform pans (baking time then approx. 30 - 40 minutes), make twice the amount of cream (i.e. 300 mascarpone, 400 g cream cheese, etc.) and then put the whole thing like this in the photo in the style of a "naked cake".
Ingredients:
250 g soft butter 250 g brown sugar 5 eggs (separate!) Zest and juice of 1 orange 170 g flour 1 tsp baking powder 100 g almonds, chopped 100 g walnuts, chopped 250 g carrots, peeled and grated sea-salt
For the coating
150 g mascarpone 200 g cream cheese 100 g powdered sugar, sifted Zest and juice of 1 lime
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 °F (180 °C).
Beat the butter and brown sugar until fluffy, then add the egg yolks one at a time, followed by the orange zest and orange juice. Then add the flour and baking powder, then the chopped almonds and walnuts to the dough, as well as the grated carrots.
In a separate bowl, beat the 5 egg whites with a pinch of sea salt until stiff and carefully fold into the remaining dough.
Then put the finished dough into a buttered (or lined with baking paper) cake pan and bake in the oven for at least 45 minutes until golden brown. Be careful - the dough tends to be “soggy” in the bottom middle, so bake it a little longer and test with a wooden stick to make sure everything is baked through!
Let the cake cool for at least an hour.
To make the coating, stir all the ingredients together and then spread the mixture over the top and sides of the cake. Decorate as desired with a pinch of chopped walnuts, walnut halves, chopped almonds or similar.
If possible, prepare the carrot cake the day before so that everything goes well!
Annotation:
If time is of the essence, you can simply cover the cake with a normal powdered sugar or lemon icing instead of the cream cheese coating.
1kg potatoes
