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Popular posts from this blog

Liver pate - Lifrarkæfa

I love liver pate, but I have never tried to make it, probably because you can get perfectly good liver pate in most supermarkets in Iceland. This sounds like a good recipe: 700 g liver 300 ml milk 2 cooked potatoes 1 tbs chopped, browned onion 3 eggs 100 g butter or 300 g fatty bacon 7 tbs flour salt and pepper dash of cardamom 1 fillet of spice-pickled herring (or about 10 anchovy fillets) Soak the liver in cold water for about 30 minutes. Remove the membranes and blood vessels. Chop coarsely and put through a grinder 4 times, with the herring/anchovies, onion, and bacon (if using). Add the potatoes for the last round of grinding. If you're using a food processor, dump everything above in at once and process into a smooth paste, using the chopping blades. Mix together the flour and spices and mix into the liver paste along with the cooled melted butter (if using). Add the eggs and mix well. Finally stir in the milk, little by little. Grease a pate mould and press the raw pate int...
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How to prepare hakarl: "rotten" or cured shark

I think I will start my series of Þorri recipes by describing how the most controversial item on the Þorri menu is made. Cured shark is one of those classic "let's scare the tourists" foods that can be found in most countries. This is not to say that we don't eat it as well. We do - some of us at any rate.  Some of us love it so much that we will eat it as a snack. For others, a small nibble before the Þorri buffet begins for real is quite sufficient. It helps the digestion, which is why I always have a few pieces before sitting down to the heavy Þorri food. I read in a book that there is uremic acid in the flesh of sharks. This I am inclined to believe, considering that cured shark smells like stagnant urine or ammonia. The uremic acid content only becomes dangerous if the shark is not butchered correctly right after it is killed, because fresh shark meat is edible and supposedly quite good, although it has never been popular in Iceland. The folk tale that tells...
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Harðfiskur – Icelandic hard (dried) fish

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Continuing with the Þorri theme, this is the single most popular food you will find on the Þorri buffet. It is a popular snack in Iceland, and some people love it so much that they will some with them when they go abroad on holiday. Harðfiskur, whole fillet Of the traditional Icelandic foods, harðfiskur and skyr are probably the two which most appeal to foreigners. I have received several e-mails from people asking how to make harðfiskur or where to buy it abroad, and so I decided it was time to give a description of how it's made. Many kinds of fish dry well, but traditionally it is mostly cod, haddock and ocean catfish (wolf-fish) that are dried. Flounder also makes excellent harðfiskur , and in some areas of Iceland people also dry arctic char.   Drying haddock, cod and flounder: Harðfiskur in ready-to-eat pieces Wash the fish and scrape off the slime, then gut the fish and remove the head. Haddock and cod can either be butterflied or filleted before drying. F...
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