#69 Iceland
- Jen
- Oct 6, 2024
- 6 min read
Iceland’s first settlers were Scandinavians in the 9th century, and much of the country’s cuisine today shares customs with traditional Norwegian or Danish cuisine.
We know from several blog posts already that harsh climates like Iceland’s mean that animal products are eaten (or used to be at least) far more than vegetables or other crops, and often in preserved form such as pickled, fermented, smoked or dried.
There’s nowhere else in the world that can offer glaciers, mountains, lakes, volcanoes, dramatic coastline, the Northern lights, and a bridge linking the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. This is why the “land of fire and ice” is a popular geography field trip location and a tourist hotspot, and that means there are a lot of “top 10 things to try in Iceland” or “top 10 Icelandic foods” web pages. My main takeaways from my web browsing are:
· There are a lot of calories in Iceland!
· Icelandic cuisine largely falls into five main food groups:
1. Bread
Iceland’s traditional bread is rúgbrauð, a crustless, dense, dark rye bread, with a naturally sweet taste. It’s baked in a pot for several hours at a low temperature, either in an oven or cooked in the ground by geothermal heat, which is exactly what they did on the Netflix show, Down to Earth*. Warning! Rúgbrauð is sometimes referred to as ‘thunderbread’ because excess consumption is reported to result in unpleasant side effects in the lower digestive tract.
* a show combining three of my favourite things: geography, food, and Zac Efron.
2. Skyr
Skyr (pronounced “skeer”) is Iceland’s most consumed dairy product. Skyr is creamy, slightly sour, and similar in consistency to Greek yoghurt. It’s sold in the yoghurt aisle, and is marketed in the UK as “Icelandic-style yoghurt”, but (Boring Fact Alert) technically, skyr is a cheese, not a yoghurt, due to the addition of rennet in its production. Skyr was brought to Iceland by Nordic settlers, but the tradition of producing it died out in Norway. It’s made from skimmed cow’s milk, which makes it naturally low fat and high protein. In the olden days, the cream skimmed from the milk would have been used to make butter, and sheep’s milk could also have been used.
Skyr can be eaten with berries for breakfast, or used as the base for many Icelandic desserts…
3. Dairy-based desserts
Late summer is picking season in Iceland for wild blueberries, bilberries, raspberries, strawberries, and other wild berries. As we Brits enjoy strawberries and cream, Icelanders enjoy their berries (blueberries in particular) with skyr combined with cream and sugar.
Icelandic cheesecake also includes Skyr, and is often topped with blueberries, and skyr can also be used as an ingredient in baked cakes.
Everybody loves ice cream, but Icelanders seem to love ice cream more than the average person. Icelanders love ice cream so much that they even have a word that means ‘ice cream car tour’: ísbíltúr - just one little word dedicated to going on a drive to get ice cream. This is a language I’m willing to learn!
Icelanders seriously make good use of all the milk from their livestock. Ábrystir is a baked milk pudding, kind of like a crème brulée or a custard tart, that can be found in higher end restaurants. It’s considered to be somewhat of a delicacy as the main ingredient is colostrum from a sheep or cow, and I’m just not sure where you’d find that if you’re not a sheep or cow farmer.
In case you don’t know, colostrum is the first milk produced by a mother mammal after giving birth. It’s super-nutritious, with a really high protein content. The protein make-up of cow colostrum gives it a special quality whereby the milk thickens and sets like a custard when heated, without the addition of thickening agents like cornflour or eggs.
There’s actually a similar an olden day British dish known as beestings pudding. Who knew?!
4. Seafood
The cold Atlantic waters around Iceland are rich in seafood and Icelanders have always made the most of this bounty, fishing from open rowing boats in the 9th century, to being around the 20th biggest fishing nation in the world today. Prior to 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones as defined by the United Nations in 1982, Iceland sending their fishing vessels out this far into the Atlantic upset their fishing neighbour, the United Kingdom, which led to the Cod Wars in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, whereby Britain’s Royal Navy were sent to guard her fishing boats near to Iceland, and it was all very serious!
Iceland’s waters are home to lobster, shellfish, and shark, as well as the same sorts of fish that we know and love in the UK: cod, haddock, salmon, plaice, etc. and like us, Icelanders are fish & chips eaters. Icelandic chips aren’t deep-fried and drowning in malt vinegar (they aren’t really chips at all); they’re oven-roasted wedges sprinkled with parsley. Fancy.
Plokkfiskur is an old and traditional fish dish, one that most Icelanders will have grown up eating. It consists of white fish poached in milk and then mashed together with cooked potatoes, sort of like a British fish pie…if you dropped it. Plokkfiskur is spreadable, and as such is often eaten on top of a thick wedge of rúgbrauð.
Fish isn’t just for dinner in Iceland, fish is for snacking. Packets of dried fish (harðfiskur), usually made using cod, a bit like a fish jerky, are very popular. Harðfiskur is either eaten straight from the packet, or even better, slathered in salted butter.
Iceland produces a disproportionate number of elite CrossFit athletes for a country with a population of less than half a million. It could possibly be a badass Viking thing, or perhaps the cold climate breeds toughness, or maybe snacking on hardfiskur and butter makes you big and strong?
One of Iceland’s most famous “delicacies”, and a traditional Christmas dish, is hákarl, a dried, fermented shark meat. Wikipedia notes: Fermented shark contains a large amount of ammonia and has a strong smell, similar to that of many cleaning products. It is often served in tiny cubes on toothpicks. Those new to it may gag involuntarily at the first attempt to eat it because of the high ammonia content. Connoisseurs will tell you that it tastes better than it smells, but the late Anthony Bourdain described it as “probably the single worst thing I have ever put in my mouth”.
In past centuries when food was sometimes in short supply, nothing could be wasted and it made sense to process shark in this way as the fresh meat is poisonous, but now we have the privilege of an abundant supply of food, I’m not sure I’d risk ruining Christmas by serving hákarl.
5. Lamb
While we’re on the subject of Christmas, the traditional Icelandic Christmas dinner, and also Sunday roast dinner, is a roast leg of lamb.
Icelanders claim their lamb to be the best in the world because the lambs are free to roam the valleys and coastlines, grazing on wild berries and seaweed.
A very traditional dish, dating back centuries is kjötsúpa. This is a chunky soup made with winter root vegetables and bone-in pieces of lamb, whatever cuts are available. It’s a simple dish born out of using whatever is available to make something warm and filling, similar to the Welsh cawl.
Another Christmas treat in Iceland is hangikjöt, smoked lamb, eaten cold and sliced, as we would eat Christmas ham.
Icelandic Sunday roast
All this talk of Christmas has got me in the mood for something festive.
The traditional accompaniments for a roast leg of lamb are creamy gravy, braised red cabbage, tinned peas (served cold), red current/rhubarb/blueberry jam, and caramelised potatoes. I’m not using “caramelised” as a euphemism for slightly burning the potatoes; I mean potatoes cooked in actual caramel made from sugar!
Now, suggesting to a Brit that their Sunday potatoes might be prepared in a manner other than roasting is, quite frankly, preposterous. However, if the not-roast potatoes involve sugar and butter…well, I’m listening.
I didn’t have time for slow roasting a leg of lamb for a full Sunday roast, so instead went with Rick Stein's Icelandic breaded lamb chops with spiced red cabbage, which is a fab recipe that I highly recommend. Mr Stein proposes buttered new potatoes alongside the lamb and cabbage, but I had to try caramel potatoes!
Let’s be honest, adding sugar to vegetables is never going to be a bad idea. Caramel potatoes feel so naughty and decadent, and are wonderful with the sweet, spiced red cabbage and the crisp lamb cutlets. The tinned peas were a surprisingly welcome addition to the plate, although I did have them hot.
Overall, this was a delicious meal. The reader will note, however, that this was a dry meal. I cannot recommend replacing roast potatoes where there will be gravy present.
I’m ready for dessert now. If anyone in the Cardiff area fancies a little ísbíltúr, let me know and I’ll pick you up.
Comments