Icelandic cooking, recipes and food

This is a nice dish. I imagine the sauce would be quite good with other dark, gamy meats, like wild duck,  wild goose or possibly wild boar. To serve 6: 6 lamb's or sheep's hearts 100 g flour butter for frying salt and pepper 6 well ripe plums (it doesn't say which kind, but the photo with the recipe shows red plums with yellow flesh - BTW, don't expect to see any such thing when the dish is cooked, since the luscious plum wedges shown in the image are a fiction of food photography) 1 large yellow onion, chopped 100 ml sweet white wine meat broth (e.g. lamb, chicken or vegetable) or water 2 tbsp cornstarch (or potato starch, or Maizena sauce thickener) First, here's how I had to compromise on the recipe: The week before I made it, I saw at least three varieties of plums in every food shop I entered and they always seemed to be so ripe as to be on the verge of becoming liquid inside their skins. The day I actually went to buy them all I could find were r...

I love liver with bacon. I haven't tried this recipe, but I plan to. 750 g liver 100 bacon 1 tsp salt 1/3 tsp pepper 1/6 tsp ginger 1/6 tsp ground cloves 60 g cooking fat 400 ml boiling cooking liquid 150 ml cream 40 g flour 200 ml cold water Clean the liver and cut into thin slices. Mix together the flour, salt and spices and roll the liver slices in it to coat. Lay a rasher of bacon on each liver slice and roll up the slices. Tie together with cotton string. Heat the cooking fat ion a pan and brown the liver slices in it. Add the milk and water and cook for 15-20 minutes. Thicken the sauce with the flour (make a paste with a little cold water to avoid clumping). Cook the sauce for a couple of minutes, then add the cream. I imagine this would be nice with mashed potatoes, redcurrant jelly and a salad.

500 g kidneys - sheep, veal or pork flour mixed with salt, pepper and paprika to taste 50 g butter or frying fat 2 onions, finely chopped 3-4 carrots, sliced 250 g tomatoes Clean the kidneys and cut each into 4 parts. Coat with spice-flour mixture. Brown in the butter/fat in a saucepan with the onions and carrots. Blanch and skin the tomatoes and add towards the end of the browning time. Add enough water so that it barely covers the ingredients. Simmer over low heat until the kidneys are tender. At the end, thicken the sauce with some flour paste and add a little cream if desired, to make a smoother sauce. Serve with potatoes. This dish is also good with mushrooms.

I have no idea why this dish is called "boneless birds". My aunt often serves it at family dinners, and it is a great favourite of mine. To the basic recipe of meat and bacon she adds mushrooms and onions. Use lamb for preference. 1 1/2 kg. lamb, beef, or horse meat 50 g butter/margarine salt and pepper to taste 500 ml water 100 g bacon 30 g flour Traditional preparation: Cut the meat into thin slices, and roll each in a mixture of salt and pepper. Put a slice of bacon on each slice of meat, roll up and tie up with twine. Brown on a hot pan. Add the water and cook until done through. Use the flour to thicken the sauce. Serve with potatoes, rhubarb jam and green peas. Easy method with bacon and mushrooms: Cut the meat into bite sized pieces and brown on a frying pan. Put in a pot with the water and bring to the boil, lower cooking temperature to simmer. Cut the bacon into pieces, fry lightly and add to the meat. Cut one large onion in half and cut the halves into thi...

I recently dined at an upscale restaurant in Reykjavík, Lækjarbrekka. Due to its location, in the very heart of the old town, it caters to many tourists and some of the menu items are quintessentially Icelandic. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that good old leftover food, plokkfiskur, on the menu. It's served au gratin with the classic accompaniment of rye bread and potatoes on the side. There are jokes about plokkfiskur - it can be either a delicacy or a disaster. During the old days, when fish was served (in some homes) five days a week, this was the standard way of using up leftovers. If you didn't finish the fish at lunch, this was what you could expect to be served for dinner. about 700 g cooked fish about 500 g cooked potatoes 50 g margarine or butter 50 g flour 750 ml milk 1/4 tsp ground pepper 1/2 to 1 medium sized onion, optional Any kind of cooked fish can be used, but to make this authentic, use cod, salt cod, haddock, or halibut. Remove al...

It's rhubarb season, so here is a recipe to try. Rhubarb grows in abundance in almost every vegetable garden in Iceland, right alongside the potatoes. In the summer, it is mostly used for soup and grautur (compote). It is preserved mostly as jam, but it also freezes well, and tastes excellent when preserved in syrup. There are many homes where rhubarb soup/ grautur is eaten throughout the winter. It is also good for desserts (especially pies and compotes) and chutneys, and it makes excellent wine. My mother used to make rhubarb compote about once or twice a month through the summer when I was little, but after my brother decided that he didn't like it, she hardly ever makes it anymore. 3/4 litres water 3-3 1/2 tbs potato starch/cornflour 250 g rhubarb 100 ml water, cold 200 ml sugar Wash the rhubarb and chop into small pieces. Drop into cold water and bring to the boil. Cook until the rhubarb pieces separate. Add the sugar and thicken with the potato starch. Don...

This is one of my father's favourite dishes. He likes it best with heaps of sugar and cream. It can be served hot or cold, as a meal in itself or as a dessert. 150 g. mixed dried fruit – the usual Icelandic combination is prunes, apples, apricots, pears and peaches. Or you can use one type of dried fruit. 100 g. sugar 900 ml. water 30 g. potato flour (or cornstarch) mixed with 100 ml. cold water Cook the fruit in the water until soft. Press through a sieve or process in a blender if you desire a finer texture. Add sugar and thicken with potato flour mix. Serve hot or cold, with cream or half & half.