Icelandic cooking, recipes and food

This is a nice recipe for lamb's or sheep's hearts. Hearts from an adult sheep will need slightly longer cooking than lamb hearts. To serve 4. 4 lamb or sheep hearts Marinade: 100 ml table vinegar 2 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried) 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped 3 laurel leaves salt and pepper For cooking: 100 g butter 100 g smoked bacon, finely chopped 10-15 shallots, sliced 1-2 tbsp flour 400-500 ml red wine 100-200 ml water salt and pepper 200 g whole small mushrooms, sautéed Cut the fat off the hearts, flush them well under running cold water and cut lengthwise into four parts each. Make the marinade and marinade the heart pieces for 4-6 hours. (I found 4 hours sufficient, but 6 will give a more intense flavour). Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or deep frying pan. Remove the hearts from the marinade and brown in the butter. Add bacon and onions. Sprinkle the sifted flour into the pan and let it soak up the butter. Add red wine and water, stir t...

I thought it was about time to post a recipe, since I remembered a very old, traditional one I have not posted before. This is a very old Icelandic dish. Since it is made in pretty much the same way as liver sausage, except using fish products, I suppose you could call it fish-liver sausage (or pudding) in English.   For 1 person: 2-3 fresh cod’s stomachs 1 cod liver Rye meal Salt White pepper (optional) Water There are two basic methods of making kútmagar . In one you use rye meal and in the other you don’t.  Since I don’t expect you can buy fresh fish stomachs just anywhere and may therefore have to buy or catch whole fish and then remove the stomachs, I have included instructions on how to clean them: You take them and rub them inside and out with sand or coarse salt until you have removed the slime and anything else that may stick to them.  Both methods: Soak the liver in cold water for a while (30 minutes or so), then re...

Happy New Year! May the new year bring you good health, much happiness and great food!

Ages ago I promised to find a recipe for skyr brulée – well I finally found one! The recipe comes from chef Steinar Þór Þorfinnsson of the restaurant Einar Ben. I haven’t tested it, but here goes: Skyr- and white chocolate crème brulée with blueberry schnapps Skyr-crème brulée: 100 g cream 100 g pure skyr 40 g egg yolk 40 g sugar 80 g white chocolate The juice of 1/2 lime 1 vanilla pod Split the vanilla pod lengthwise and put in a saucepan with the cream. Bring to the boil, remove from the heat and add the skyr. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and add to the warm skyr mixture. Stir together the egg yolk and sugar and add to the skyr mixture along with the lime juice. Put into crème brulée ramekins and bake in a water bath at 120 °C for 30 minutes. Cool. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and melt the sugar with a crème brulée torch. P.S. Before making this, please take a look at the review in the comment. Blueberry schnapps: 125 g puréed blueberries 500 ...

European rowans ( Sorbus aucupari , sometimes called European mountain ash) grow well in the Icelandic climate and are common garden trees. In the autumn after the first frost and thaw you can see thrushes feasting on the berries and getting tipsy on the fermented juice. Humans also eat rowan berries, especially in jams and jellies (raw berries will cause indigestion, so don't let the lovely colour tempt you to try them uncooked). The slightly bitter flavour makes rowan preserves an excellent match with strong cheeses and game, such as wild goose and reindeer, and it's also good with lamb. If I can get enough rowan berries from a non-polluted source I plan to try making this jelly: 2 litres rowan berries with stalks 500 gr apples with skins (Jonagold is recommended as being flavourful and rich in pectin) 750 ml water 900 ml sugar for every 1 litre of juice Pick the berries and freeze them overnight. This removes the worst of the bitter flavour of the berries. Bri...

This bread relies on fermentation for both rising and sweetness. I have not tested this recipe. 2 kg. rye flour 1 litre of water or a 1:1 mixture of water and whey 1 tsp salt Put the rye flour into a large bowl. Warm the water and add the salt and then add the water to the rye flour and mix well together. Turn out onto a floured table and knead until smooth and free of cracks. Rub a little bit of cooking oil on your hands and form the dough into a loaf. Put the loaf into a well-oiled container - Icelanders often use tins, but a cooking pot or a casserole dish may be used as well. It has to fit inside another, larger container. The dough must not fill the container as it will rise (the genius who wrote the recipe book unfortunately does not say by how much). Put a damp cloth on top of the container and leave to rise in a warm spot overnight. When the dough has risen, put baking paper on top of it and then close the baking container (with a lid, or if that‘s not available, with a...

Stone bramble berries have a somewhat bitter flavour that goes well with lamb and all kinds of game, for example reindeer and wild goose. I can usually only get a very small amount of them, but I often mix them with redcurrants to get a very nice, beautifully red jelly. Pick stone bramble berries. It takes a considerable amount of berries to get a good amount of juice, but I can't tell you exactly what amount of berries will yield what amount of juice. Flush the berries with cold water and put in a cooking pot. Bring to the boil on low and cook gently until the berries burst and release their juice. Pour the berries and juice into a cheesecloth strainer and strain away the juice. The cheesecloth may be squeezed to extract more juice.   Measure the juice and put it in a cooking pot and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and add 1 kg of sugar for every litre of juice (if it’s less than a litre, then add 100 grams of sugar for each 100 ml of juice). Stir to dissolve the ...