Grænkálsbúðingur

Kale pudding

My family was horrified when I announced that we were having "kale pudding" for dinner. But afterwards they found it quite harmless and actually quite tasty!

It wasn't a sweet pudding with kale, but a nice hearty dish.


Ingredients

750 g kale
1 Tbsp butter
250 ml cream
3 eggs
1 pinch of coarse sea salt
1 pinch of black pepper
1 tsp melted butter
(for greasing the pudding mold)


Preparation

Slowly heat the butter and cream in a saucepan until everything is evenly warm. Then put it in a bowl and chill in the fridge for about 10 minutes.

Then add the eggs and stir in slowly and very thoroughly. Then let the mixture stand in a cool place for about 1/4 hour.

Wash the kale thoroughly and briefly put the leaves in boiling salted water, blanch for about 2 minutes, then rinse briefly in cold water, drain well and carefully cut into thin strips.

Fold the kale into the remaining mixture, place in a greased pudding dish and cover.

Let it cook in a water bath until the cabbage pudding has set nicely and lifts easily.

Then carefully remove it from the mold and serve the cabbage pudding with turnips and potatoes tossed in butter.

[Translated from here.]

Grænkálssalat með skyri

Kale salad with skyr

Ingredients

100 g kale leaves
1 Tbsp Skyr
1 Tbsp milk
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp apple cider vinegar


Preparation

First mix the skyr with the milk in a bowl (I had to use a pot because there was no bowl in our holiday home), then mix with the sugar and apple cider vinegar.

Wash and spin the kale and carefully chop it into small pieces. Then add to the Skyr dressing and fold in.

Traditionally, this kale salad is served with fresh bread and butter for dinner.

[Translated from here.]

Grænkál

Kale in the school garden in Ísafjörður

...in Icelandic cuisine

Kale is fast-growing and hardy, but doesn't like heat or moist soil - so this vegetable is of course ideal for Iceland.

While we often say that kale should only be harvested after the first frost because then the glucose content of the cabbage leaves is higher, in Iceland you can harvest it from the end of September due to the cooler temperatures there, so the kale season is significantly longer than in Iceland us.

So far I haven't really had a particularly good relationship with kale, but since I've come across it so often in my old Icelandic cookbooks and in a current Icelandic cooking magazine, I thought - you had to give it a try...! And I worked a bit on the kale.

In Icelandic cuisine, kale is consumed in very different forms, not only boiled or stewed for a long time, but also briefly cooked and also raw in salads. By the way, fresh kale is one of the foods richest in vitamin C and is therefore not only delicious, but also very healthy.

I've picked out a few Icelandic kale recipes for the next few days that I'd like to feature here in the blog!

Kale at the Witchcraft Museum in Hólmavík

[Translated from here.]

Matur og drykkur - 3rd course

Main dish

Cod head cooked in chicken broth with seaweed,

served with potato salad and lovage

The third course was the main course. Cod head, the very special house specialty - served with potato salad and fried cod tongues.

While we were able to take a short breather after the second course and wait for our main course, we were fascinated to watch the chefs at work - the individual components of the dishes are delivered directly from the kitchen and are then served in front of all the guests. Also the "burning" of the cod heads - real experience gastronomy in Icelandic. Especially since the chefs obviously had fun despite all their concentration. It was really exciting!

Then we were served our cod head. It was truly - remarkable! The cod head was about the same size as our plate. I didn't realize the fish heads would be so big. The cod head tasted great, with a slight licorice flavor on the glazed surface and the soft, mild, aromatic and juicy fish flesh... a totally unexpected but great experience! (The Icelanders used to give cod heads because they could export the fish and then only the "leftovers" remained for themselves.)

Þorskhaus eldaður í
kjúklingasoði og sölvum.
Borinn fram með kartöflusalati
og skessujurt.

However, I couldn't eat too much of the cod head, it felt somehow strange to me to pull the meat from the head and cheeks of this fish...

By the way, I really don't know why I didn't take a photo of the potato salad with lovage. The potato salad was really good! With whole small Icelandic potatoes and whole small red onions in sauce - unusual because it wasn't a "uniform mash" but you could clearly distinguish the soft potatoes from the crunchy onions in your mouth. Definitely delicious!

There was also fried cod tongues with the cod head, with a very intense, lush green sauce - I assume tarragon was also involved.

By the way - learned something again! As we were clearing away the eaten cod head, our waiter asked us if we knew that you could tell how old the fish had become by looking at certain bones on the cod's brain..? Did we want to see the bones? Yes, of course we wanted to!

The waiter then took off with the gnawed head, negotiated briefly with the cook at the counter and another cook who stuck the head out of the kitchen hatch, then there was a huge crack and crunch as the cod's head was split...

...and a little later our waiter came back with a small glass plate on which two small... well, what actually? - lay. Visually and also in terms of touch, the bones had something of a “plastic angel wing” about them. You can determine the age of the fish from the "hearing stones" by counting the "age rings" - similar to a tree. Our fish was 16 years old, the waiter explained to us.

He gave us the "hearing stones" of our cod head and told us that we could make beautiful earrings out of them.

Overview of the 4-course menu at Matur og Drykkur


[Translated from here.]

Matur og drykkur - 2nd course

Hot starters

Salted cod croquettes with horseradish remoulade

Baked crawfish and cauliflower with horseradish and tarragon

The second course was cod croquettes with horseradish remoulade - a speciality of the house. With lots of salted cod, a bit of potatoes and a nice portion of dill for that special kick. The soft, tasty "fish porridge" creates an interesting contrast with the crispy crust alone, and the horseradish remoulade is really tasty. The Saltfiskkrókettur was also available separately as larger portions with larger croquettes as the main course - definitely recommended!

The second part of the warm starters consisted of a baked lobster with two fried cauliflower florets, a light horseradish sauce and an intense green tarragon sauce. There were also pickled raisins and something else crunchy, which unfortunately I didn't notice. Our waiter explained to us very lovingly and in detail in English what was being served to us with each plate!

The meal was definitely a great treat!!!

Overview of the 4-course menu at Matur og Drykkur



[Translated from here.]

Matur og drykkur - 1st course

Cold appetizers

Dried fish with whey butter and pickled seaweed

Trout smoked over sheep dung with horseradish and toasted flatbread

Sea hare roe with cucumber and mustard on fried egg yolk

The first appetizer we got was a plate of fish chips, a dab of butter and small, slightly salty "balls" - in Icelandic: Harðfiskflögur, burnt mysusmjör og sýrð söl .

I've only ever known harðfiskur as a pretty tough, dusty affair, but these fish chips were absolutely brilliant, soft and textured at the same time and really, really tasty! Plus the soft whey butter and as a “counterpoint” the pickled seaweed, a type of red algae. It was really just a small plate, a saucer, and the chips were correspondingly small - but ultimately delicious!

Afterwards we were served a kind of “caraway bread” with soft butter (also very tasty!).

The second “appetizer” was the trout smoked over sheep dung, served with horseradish cream and fresh dill on toasted Flatbrauð, i.e. warm Icelandic flatbread. The taste of the sheep dung smoke is absolutely characteristic, takes a little getting used to at first, but is simply incredibly delicious in the second.

The third part of the cold starters was a plate of fried egg yolk, somewhat reminiscent of tortilla chips, on top of which was a cool, moist mass - lumpfish roe and pickled cucumber slices with fresh cress. For my taste, the cucumber dominated, but the different textures of the crisp, baked egg yolk and the soft, sour topping were interesting.

I was completely busy and in heaven!

Overview of the 4-course menu at Matur og Drykkur



[Translated from here.]

Matur og drykkur

Fantastic dinner in one of Iceland's best restaurants

When we were in Reykjavík during the autumn holidays in 2016, I fulfilled a big, long-held dream: we reserved a table for the evening in the restaurant "Matur og Drykkur". The food was absolutely brilliant and definitely a highlight, if not THE highlight, of my Iceland vacation this time!

I first came across the restaurant in March 2016 - on the Vox cooking show "Kitchen Impossible". As a result, the Berlin star chef Tim Raue was sent to Iceland by Tim Mälzer, to the very same restaurant with the Icelandic top chef Gísli Matthías Auðunss on. Gísli Matt actually comes from Vestmannaeyjar, the Westman Islands, and also works in the family restaurant “Slipurinn” in Heimaey during the season. In January 2015 he opened the "Matur og Drykkur" in Reykjavík with friends, ...

...in a former factory building built in 1924 near the harbor, which housed a saltfish factory until the 1960s. Today the building houses the Saga Museum (also highly recommended, I think!) and now also the restaurant.

The restaurant takes its name from the matarbiblía okkar Íslendinga , i.e. the "food bible of the Icelanders", the cookbook "Matur og Drykkur" ("Food and Drink") by Helga Siguðardóttir, which was originally published in 1946 (by the way, the cookbook was published in its old form in 2009 reissued - yay!).

Since the restaurant is in high demand, we reserved a table for two people online. Luckily, because it was really well attended - guests who came spontaneously were unfortunately unable to get a seat, but they were very kindly given a card so that they can reserve a table for their next visit.

The evening menu includes a few individual main courses and desserts, or you can opt for a 4-course meal. The menu was available in three variations, one “typical Icelandic”, one with fish and seafood and one vegetarian. The menus each cost 9,990 ISK, the equivalent of just under €80. Alternatively, you could have ordered drinks to go with the dishes, for an additional 7,990 ISK (a good €60).

We chose the seafood menu (without drinks) - and it was absolutely worth it!!!

By the end of the evening we were extremely full in an incredibly pleasant way. The “Matur og drykkur” was currently named the 8th best restaurant in Iceland by the “White Guide Nordic” in October 2016. I can really only recommend the food!!!

1st course

2nd course

3rd course

4th course





[Translated from here.]