2. Boiled goose with potatoes and onion stuffing á la Irish. One goose, salt, pepper. Broth: neck, heart and gizzard of goose, a small onion, a carrot and fresh thyme, parsley, a little celery, 6–7 peppercorns, water. Stuffing: 10 medium-sized potatoes, 7 onions, 6 apples, 50 grams of butter, one tablespoon of chopped parsley, one tablespoon of chopped lemongrass, salt and pepper. Pluck and torch the goose in the same way as Icelandic wild goose. In Ireland there is an old tradition of hanging onto the feathered wings to dust the dark corners of the house. The smaller feathers went into pillows. Start by preparing the stuffing. Boil potatoes in salted water, and then peel and mash them. Chop the onion and brown it in a pan or pot for 5 minutes, without burning it. Add the sliced apples to the onion in the pan and cook them until they soften. Regularly stir the onion and apple mix. Add the mashed potatoes, parsley, lemongrass, salt and pepper and blend them well together. Allow the stuffing to cool before filling the goose. Clean out the innards of the Irish goose in the same way as the Icelandic one. To make the broth, throw the neck, heart and gizzard into a pot with a small onion, one carrot, thyme, parsley, celery and the peppercorns. Drown them in cold water and allow them to simmer at a low heat for 2 hours. The wings can be added if one wants. Season the washed and dried goose with salt and pepper, both inside and out, and insert the stuffing. Rub sea salt into breast exterior. Place the goose in a big roasting pot, slip it into the oven, add water to the pot, place a lid over it and boil at a moderate temperature for 2–3 hours or for as long as it takes to remove all traces of the accident. Lift the lid off the pot 3–4 times during the boiling and spoon off the fat and juice and keep in a jar for another occasion. The fat can be kept for a long time in a jar in the fridge and can be put to a variety of uses, e.g. to pour over potatoes in the oven. In the olden days it was considered beneficial to rub the goose fat into the chests of people with respiratory problems. Goose fat was also used to polish kitchen utensils in Irish homes as well as leather garments. Add the potatoes to the goose and allow them to cook with it for an hour. For the last 30 minutes remove the lid from the pot, and turn up the heat to brown the goose. Meanwhile, make the sauce. Filter the broth, add the cooking juices and fat from the goose, taste and season (dilute with water if the broth is too strong) and bring to boiling point again. Thicken the sauce according to taste. Eat the goose with the stuffing, baked potatoes, apple mousse and sauce. While the goose is cooking, use the opportunity to take a stroll around the cemetery.
SLICING ONIONS
Peeling and chopping seven onions can be a daunting task for sensitive souls. The use of swimming goggles is recommended or ski goggles, when available, since the latter are, of course, bigger and work better in many cases. Some people are of the firm belief that holding one’s breath during the cutting is an effective antidote. It normally takes less than a minute to peel and chop an onion, but seven onions represent a far greater challenge. There are also those who recommend peeling the onion under a tap of running cold water. If none of these remedies work, it is best to ask the nearest person to you to cut the onion, a man, for example. Although this is by no means a universal law, their emotional make-up is often structured differently, particularly with regard to the thickness of their skin.
CARROT MOUSSE (SIDE DISH WITH GOOSE)
1 kilo of carrots, ½ cup of carrot juice, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 cup of cream, ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg. Wash carrots and boil in a pot with as little water as possible. The carrots are cooked when they become soft. Put them into a food processor or mixer, if you happen to have one handy in your home (if not mash the carrots with a fork) with a little bit of carrot juice, cream, salt, sugar and nutmeg. Eat it as a side dish with the wild goose or roasted lamb (see recipes). The same method can be applied for the making of turnip mousse by substituting turnips for the carrots. Or you can even mix the two vegetables to make carrot and turnip mousse.
SUCCULENT REDCURRANT JELLY (SIDE DISH WITH GOOSE)
1–2 shrubs of redcurrant, sugar (60% of the weight of the fruit). If you don’t have any redcurrants growing in your garden, you can always negotiate with a neighbour who doesn’t make any use of his or her bush—due, for example, to back problems or old age—and bribe them into allowing you to pick the berries in exchange for two succulent jars of redcurrant jelly. The island is littered with unexploited redcurrant bushes, particularly in the older neighbourhoods of towns. One needs to bear in mind that there is considerably more waste in the making of redcurrant jelly than other types of jelly. Pick the redcurrants and rinse them. There is no need to strip the currants from their light green stalks. Place in a big pot. Put on heat for 2–3 minutes and allow to boil or wait for the berries to start bursting. Turn off the heat and let it simmer a while in the pot. Tip the whole lot into the sieve and allow it to drip through. Add sugar (600 grams for each litre of juice). Boil for a few minutes or until it starts to thicken. Skim the froth off and make sure the juice does not boil for too long. The succulent redcurrant jelly is ready when it slides off a silver spoon in long blobs. If there is no silver spoon in the house, a normal spoon will do. Allow to cool and place in small jars. Remember to give your neighbour his/her jars.
SPAGHETTI CARBONARA
Spaghetti, dry or fresh, a packet of bacon (preferably diced), 2 egg yolks, 1 pot of crème fraîche or 1 cup of cream, grated parmesan, olive oil. Boil water in a pot, salt it, throw the pasta in and cook it as instructed on package. Be careful not to over-boil it. Meanwhile, cut or slice the bacon into thin pieces and pan-fry them in a tiny bit of oil. Drain the water from the pasta through a sieve and then throw the pasta back into the pot again. Do not place the pot back over the stove. Mix the two egg yolks with the pasta and toss in the pieces of bacon with the tub of cream. You have to be quick mixing all this together to make sure the egg yolks don’t curdle. Sometimes the cheese is added into the pot. Season with freshly ground pepper and eat immediately with parmesan and, on special occasions, with a glass of Umbrian red wine.
OVEN-BAKED PEPPERS
Sliced or whole peppers baked in the oven or grilled are one of the simplest dishes to make, and will normally just cook themselves, with a maximum time of 10–15 minutes. Peppers are rich in iron, beneficial to women, and make a good side dish with fish, meat, other vegetables, rice or as a dish on their own. It is the ideal dish for a woman taking her first steps in the culinary arts. Choose organic peppers and cut each one in four, slicing them lengthwise. Place them on a baking tray or an oven-proof plate, sprinkle them with olive oil and sea salt and bake. You can mix all colours of peppers, yellow, orange, green and red. Red peppers are the sweetest and tastiest, however. You can throw any kind of vegetable into the oven to roast, e.g. sliced vegetable marrow, mushrooms, leeks and aubergines.
CHRISTMAS CAKE WITH RAISINS
When a guest appears unexpectedly, it is a good idea to buy Christmas cake in the nearest bakery, i.e. if guests appear with only ten minutes’ warning. That is normally the simplest way to be totally sure of the quality of the cake. Very few working single mothers actually have the time to bake a Christmas cake. The following, however, is a quick recipe. 2½ cups of flour, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, ½ cup of sugar, 1 egg, a few drops of vanilla, 2 cups of milk, 100 grams of butter, 50 grams of raisins. Mix the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Mix half of the milk and the egg into the dough. Melt the butter in a pot and mix it with the dough, remainder of the milk and vanilla drops.
Finally, mix in the raisins. Pour into a buttered cake tin and bake for 40 minutes.
SOUR WHALE (FOR BUFFET)
1 kilo of whale blubber, 1 litre of whey. Even though sour whale might be offered on the buffet table of a kindergarten (along with black olives, mozzarella, feta cheese, French goat’s cheese, blood pudding, dried fish and mushrooms) in a novel, this isn’t a combination I would want to offer any guests of mine. Yet many young children are curious to taste this white whale jelly and it is very ea
sy to make. As is well known, whale blubber is the thick layer of adipose tissue that covers the stomach of the whale and is rich in fat. The main obstacle is the scarcity of these basic ingredients. The method to be used is roughly as follows: wash the whale blubber, place it in a pot and boil it until it becomes tender. Drain it fully using a colander and then cut the blubber into pieces about 2cm thick. Then place it in a container, pour the whey over it and allow it to ferment. Make sure the blubber is completely covered by the whey and note that you may need to add whey from time to time. The blubber can be tasted after 5 days of fermentation in the whey. Keep in a cool place but do not freeze. If the whale blubber is transported between countries, ensure it is kept in a little whey in a container with a good lid.
KRÚTTKEX (CUTIE COOKIES)
There is no guarantee that all of the food items mentioned in this novel can be found on the shelves of a supermarket. One example of this is the episode in which the narrator does a weekend shop for the child in her charge. The items mentioned include, among other things: whey, Superman yogurt, bananas, hopping sausages, children’s cheese, Little Rascal bread, milk, kindergarten pâté, alphabet pasta and Cutie cookies. Some of these products are to be found in stores, others not. However, since fiction can sometimes have a prophetic dimension, one cannot exclude the possibility that some of these products may appear on the market in the future.
PORRIDGE
3 cups of water, 1 cup of organically grown oats, salt. When the water is on the point of boiling in the pot, put in the oats, salt it and mix it once. Remove the porridge from the heat as soon as it boils. That way the porridge stays granular and retains its original form. The porridge can also be cooked starting in cold water, which will make it softer and smoother. The porridge should then be boiled for two minutes and divided equally between two bowls, if both parties have the same appetite. Porridge is eaten with milk, or perhaps with a little cream. In Iceland some people like to substitute the milk with AB milk (a local dairy product produced from pasteurized and homogenized milk) http://www.ms.is/Vorur/Markfaedi-og-baetiefnavorur/AB-vorur/204/default.aspx or súrmilk (a type of yogurt made from skimmed milk). In the last century, cold porridge was often mixed with skyr (buttermilk) and known as hræringur around the country. Many of the people who were sent off into the countryside and had parched mouths at the end of their long journeys have mixed memories of this kind of porridge, which was served with blood pudding. Nowadays, dates, apples and dried apricots are sometimes mixed into the porridge. One can also put green leaves into the porridge to give it a green colour, such as finely chopped lemongrass, boiled Icelandic moss, yarrow, lady’s mantle and white dryas. This would make it summer porridge.
RED WINE (ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS)
Some of the characters in the story have a keen fondness for alcohol, although this applies more to the secondary characters than the narrator. Examples of excessive drinking are to be found in various parts of the novel, even from an expectant mother. There are also various references to light wine, liqueurs or stronger spirits such as cognac, but equally often, if not more often, the characters drink water or fresh milk. The journey begins with two bottles of water, for example, and there is one occurrence of three to four glasses of milk being downed by a child in the space of a paragraph. Even though moderate drinking can occasionally help us escape the burdens of existence, it is by no means an established pattern in the narrator’s life nor a lifestyle, but rather behaviour that is strictly dictated by narrative necessity. In fact, it would be more accurate to talk about regular exceptions. It may be of symbolic significance that the narrator does not dwell on the potential consequences of inebriation; the fulcrum of the plot lies elsewhere. If one does go too far, however, there are a number of day-after remedies that can be suggested. I will mention only one that remains infallible: a tasty miso soup.
HOME-BREWED CROWBERRY SCHNAPPS IN A JAR
Crowberries (you can also use redcurrant, blackcurrant or various other berries), sugar, pure vodka. Take a large, clean 2-litre jar with a lid and fill half of it with berries. Fill a quarter of the jar with sugar. Fill the remaining quarter of the jar with pure vodka, right up to the brim. Fasten the lid on the jar and place it somewhere safe out of the reach of children, but not under a bed or somewhere else where the jar may be forgotten. Turn the jar over once a day for a period of two months. If you prepare the jar in mid-October, the schnapps will be ready just before Christmas. As soon as the winter solstice dawns, it is ideal to sit out on the deck, well dressed, and to drink two to three shots of this beverage with the celestial vault in full view.
EXTREMELY THICK RICE PUDDING WITH CINNAMON SUGAR
2–3 cups of rice, 2 cups of cold water, 1 teaspoon of salt, ½ cup of raisins, 1½ litres of milk, cinnamon. There are a number of rice pudding variants of varying thickness. Thoroughly rinse the rice in cold water. Different types of rice can be used, everything from organic brown rice to the sticky River Rice that was used for a long time. Put 2–3 cups of rice in a pot and pour 1½ cups of cold water over it. Salt. Bring it to the boil, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook it until almost all of the water has evaporated, but without allowing the rice to stick together, i.e. about 5 minutes. Allow the child to sprinkle it with raisins. Pour the milk into the pot, bit by bit, and bring to the boil again. Do not place the lid on the pot while the rice is cooking or it will boil over. Boil the rice at low heat until the grains are soft. Turn off the heat and allow it to simmer for 5 minutes, while the milk seeps into the rice. Help the child to mix the cinnamon and sugar in the bowl. Eat with cold milk and cinnamon. It is nice to eat the rice pudding with slices of liver pudding.
SESAME SEED BREAD ROLLS FROM THE BAKERY
Sesame seed bread rolls rapidly fell out of fashion because of the white flour they are made with, but they are regaining popularity again, particularly on weekends. They are ideal for a man and a woman after their second night. The easiest thing to do by far is to buy sesame seed bread rolls in the bakery. They can vary greatly from one bakery to the next. In some places they can be quite dense and soft, whereas in others they have a crispy crust and airy interior, completely empty in fact.
FISH BALLS WITH BOILED POTATOES AND BUTTER
Buy 1 kilo of fresh, fat haddock. Check out the origins of the fish and at least make sure that it was not fished in Fossvogur, but rather in the north or west of the country. Tuesday is normally fish ball day. Ask your fishmonger to personally skin and fillet your selected haddock from the north or west. You can also ask him to mince the fish to save you the trouble—specify whether it is for a woman and a child or for a man, woman, child and mother-in-law—and decide at the same time whether, and if so how many, onions should go into the mincer. It is best to get to the fishmongers before the crowds get in, i.e. before five-thirty. That will also give you time to talk about other things, and, for example, discuss the theoretical differences between the head and tail of the fish and other topics, such as catch quota issues and the pricing of marine products. It is four-thirty and, for the third time, the old woman in front of me in the queue tells the fishmonger, who is cutting some fish for her, in a low voice to take another three centimetres off the tail, after which, in an almost inaudible whisper, she confesses: “Because it’s just me at home.” Although it can be interesting to ponder who buys what and for how many people, I give very little away about my family status. I confess nothing to the fishmonger and am saved by the child, since I can say I’m buying for two. That way the fishmonger can imagine I’m happily married and that he’s selling minced fish to a very enamoured couple. Then I can give the boy the leftovers of the fish balls the next day, while I have tea and toast with tomatoes. Sometimes your personal fishmonger will give you a good recipe for gellur or cod tongues. Although I’ve never really been able to relate to those fleshy triangular muscles behind the cod’s chin and under its tongue, when a man passes on a recipe to a woman it creates a certain kind of bond, intimacy ev
en. If I were to divulge too much information and were to reveal, for example, that there were two adults in the house or that my husband is from the west of the country where those cod tongues come from, or that he prefers haddock fried in breadcrumbs or something along those lines, because that was what his mother used to cook for him (the kind of thing women say sometimes), then the fishmonger would probably keep his cod tongue recipe to himself. In the two minutes that he is away operating the mincing machine, I swiftly glance at the rye bread, dry fish, lamb dripping and love balls on display on the glass counter. Seeing my reflection in the glass I brush my bangs aside. 1 kilo of minced haddock with or without onion, 4 tablespoons of flour, 1 tablespoon of potato flour (optional), 1 tablespoon of sea salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 2 eggs, 100 millilitres of milk, ½ onion and/or chives. Mix the minced fish, flour, potato flour and seasoning, also mixing in the eggs and then the milk. Add in the chopped chives as well, if you want. Chives grow in the garden or in a pot on the balcony from April to November. You can also use parsley that will grow all year round in a pot on the kitchen window sill. Heat some olive oil and butter in a pan. Mould the fish balls with the help of a spoon until they assume the shape of little white mice and then fry them in the pan. Quickly remove two half-fried fish balls and place them on a saucer so that you can eat them with Japanese soy sauce, while you finish frying the other balls. The fish balls should be eaten with butter and new potatoes, preferably from the November harvest, if available. The potatoes should be boiled at moderate heat for a short time so that they do not become too soft. Instead of butter, you can use curry sauce on the fish balls. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pot. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and mix together, then add 2 cups of milk and bring to the boil. Meanwhile keep on stirring. Season with Indian curry powder, salt and pepper, and finally add 1 teaspoon of sugar.
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