Léttsteiktur lundi

Seared puffin

In Iceland there are also things on the menu that tend to cause horror in our part of the world. In addition to whale meat and dishes such as sheep's head or cod head, this also includes puffin (" lundi "). You can still often find puffins on Icelandic menus today.

Latrabjarg

The cute-looking little animals that breed in burrows on cliffs in the summer can be found in Iceland, for example, on the Látrabjarg cliffs (in the far west of the Westfjords), at Reynisfjall near Vík í Mýrdal on the south coast of Iceland or on the Westman Islands. Around the middle of May, the birds lay their eggs in holes/burrows they have dug themselves, and the young hatch after just under 6 weeks. After another 6 to 7 weeks the young birds fledge. From the end of August onwards, it is very rare to see puffins on the bird cliffs in Iceland. The animals only return in April.

View from Dyrhólaey to Reynisfjara

In Iceland, puffins were often an important source of food, especially at the end of spring when supplies from the previous year were exhausted. Then people collected the eggs from the nests on the cliffs or caught the adult birds.

The IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has classified the puffin as an endangered species since 2015 after populations have declined significantly in recent decades.

When we saw frozen puffins in the meat department at the Kolaportið, the market / flea market that takes place every weekend in Tollhúsið on Tryggvagata in Reykjavík, I wanted to take a bird with me and try it... if you're serious about Icelandic cuisine , I think that's part of it too.

By the way, the meat is visually more reminiscent of beef, it smells a lot like fish and tastes almost like liver.

Ingredients

1 puffin
1 Tbsp butter
250 ml malt beer
250 ml cream
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of black pepper


Preparation

Heat the butter in a large pan, then fry the bird (preferably well plucked) on both sides for a few minutes.

Then reduce the heat and season the bird with salt and pepper.

Pour the root beer and cream into the pan...

...and let it cook until the sauce thickens nicely.

Finally, season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste and serve the lundi with sauce and potatoes.

Annotation:

Our little bird weighed almost 100 g, including all the bones and feathers that were still attached. In the end, only a few morsels of meat remained. In my old Icelandic cookbook, Lundi calculates 4 to 6 birds per person.

A bird costs the equivalent of around 8 euros, if you actually prepare 6 birds per person, that would be just under 50 euros just for the meat. Compared to other types of meat, lundi is also quite expensive in Iceland at around 80 euros per kilo, but if you're just buying a bird for experimental purposes, I found it to be justifiable. Especially since Lundi are not for “mass feeding” in my opinion.

[Translated from here.]