The Reykjavik Kitchen Exhibition

We’ve recently returned from a short break in Reykjavik and whilst we were there we visited a small exhibition about food in Reykjavik. It runs until 23 November, so if any of you are there then, I’d recommend you go and have a look too.

The exhibition is in one of the oldest houses in Reykjavik and shares the building with Kraum – a shop containing work from 80 different Icelandic designers.
The displays take you through different periods in time, showing how the people of Reykjavik have changed their eating habits over the last hundred years. There are kitchen artifacts, old photos and handwritten recipes and although all the information is in Icelandic I found I could get a pretty good idea of the ‘story’... okay I’ve cheated a little – I picked up a leaflet which had an abridged version in English!

The story told in chronological order, begins in 1900 when Reykjavik was a growing town of 6700 residents.

1900-1930 Reykjavik was primarily a fishing town, and its residents lived on seafood but also had access to a variety of food in stores. Shortages often occurred due to communication difficulties and farm products, especially milk were affected. The diet in Reykjavik was considerably different to that in other parts of Iceland, where mutton, milk and butter were more readily available. In Reykjavik, the ordinary person’s daily diet was fish, skyr (a cultured dairy product, rye bread, margarine and coffee. Well-off people tended to indulge themselves in the Danish tradition – the Danish influence being strong at the time as Iceland was ruled by Denmark. Most common people ate fish twice a day, either dried, salted or fresh, with swede or rye bread. Skyr was also a daily food item. Rye was the main cereal staple, but all other types of grain had to be imported because of the harsh climate and short summers.

1930-1960 Import restrictions stretched right into the 1960s and many foreign foods disappeared from Reykjavik’s tables, this forced people to return again to domestically produced food.
As domestic food production grew quickly, the diet of the townspeople differed greatly by class and there were often great food shortages for poor people. Fish was still a common food for all classes, and in most families fish was the main meal three or four times a week. As no fruit is grown in Iceland, fruit was a scarce commodity, with its import being greatly restricted, as was the case for vegetables. Plots for growing vegetables were available to the residents of Reykjavik where they grew potatoes, carrots, swedes, rhubarb and kale. However, imported sugar was an important part of the diet, and sugar consumption in Europe seldom equalled that of the Icelanders.
During World War II the diet improved, and meat was seen more often on the table. The British and American occupying forces brought new things with them, and canned meat, beer, chewing gum and various delicacies became popular with the townspeople.
Even a group of idealistic vegetarians emerged, despite the import restrictions on fruit and vegetables.

1960-1975 Free trade was instituted in the period 1959-1971, and the selection of goods in stores increased greatly. International food culture began making itself felt, and various speciality food stores sprang up. Freezers and other home appliances had a dramatic effect on food preparation. The popularity of cured, pickled and salted foods dwindled, while fresh and frozen foods became readily available. Fruit and vegetables became an important part of people’s daily consumption. Self-service stores and shopping centres began to appear.

1975-2000 Exotic foods and food traditions came to Iceland with free trade and Icelander’s trips abroad. The hamburger and pizza generation grew up and turned to pasta, Mexican and Asian food. Fish, the everyday diet of the people of Reykjavik, became popular for holiday meals and restaurant courses, and people went out to eat more and more often, instead of the friendly shopkeeper on the corner, ever bigger shopping centres took over, and the selection of food became incredible. Fast food seized the day, and the family’s eating habits changed in the daily grind. The family meal lost its former status and became rarer. Around 2000, Reykjavik became a city of 111,000, and the food patterns became more like those of big cities abroad.

Well, there you have it, a potted history of Reykjavik’s food culture.

Reykjavik has become quite cosmopolitan and experimental in the food arena over the last eight years. When we first visited in 2000 there were only a couple of ethnic restaurants in the city, but now that number has grown into a substantial quantity of establishments. The people of Reykjavik have embraced more diverse flavours and the chefs are not afraid to apply some kitchen alchemy to produce fusion style dishes using top quality Icelandic ingredients. Maybe fusion has had its day in Britain, but Iceland has had a fair deal of catching up to do – and it’s doing it very well.

The organisers of the exhibition, Matur-saga-menning (Food-history-culture) whose aims are to strengthen people’s knowledge of Icelandic food and to call attention to the cultural heritage of food traditions, are currently in the process of collecting old recipes from different regions and districts and this is high on the association’s wish list.
So, if I have any Icelandic readers out there who feel that they could help the association in their quest, you can get information to the association and/or join it on its website www.matarsetur.is.

You can also send a letter to:

Matur-saga-menning,

ReykjavíkurAkademian,

Hringbraut 121,

107 Reykjavik.

Matur-saga-menning website – all in Icelandic but has some interesting pictures from the exhibition. There are recipes too, but again, in Icelandic.
www.matursetur.is

A couple of Icelandic recipes from my previous posts.
Fiskibollur (Fish Balls)
Piparkökur (Icelandic Pepper Cookies)

For an insight into Icelandic cooking you can see some recipes here

The Icelandic Design centre

www.kraum.is

Spicy Tomato Chutney

Today the house is filled with an enticing fruity, spicy vinegary smell, as I’m making chutney.

It’s just as well we’re not getting tired of eating the 35 pounds or so of tomatoes from this year’s harvest, but it is rather slow going. Time to preserve them, I think. I’ve already oven dried and bottled some, but this time I want to make something that will keep well and can be brought out at Christmas time.
I’m having to improvise a little, so this recipe, of sorts, can really only serve as guide, but I hope you get the idea.

You will need… Loads of tomatoes, chopped, probably about 3 lb. I filled a large colander.
3 medium sized onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
8 oz sugar
white wine vinegar, approximately 4 fluid oz
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp black mustard seeds
half tsp ground cloves
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp kalonji* seeds
half tsp dried red chilli flakes
1 tsp salt

How to make it… It’s easy really. Just put all the ingredients into a large pan and mix well to combine. Place on the stove and turn on the heat to a gentle setting and slowly bring to a simmer.
Keep an eye on it and stir occasionally to make sure it is not sticking to the bottom of the pan. You must make sure it doesn’t catch and burn otherwise this will spoil the taste by making it bitter.
I left it on the heat for a very long time until it had reduced by half and took on a glossy jammy consistency.
Afterwards I left it to cool slightly and then ladled it into sterilised jars.

So, how did it turn out?

Well, considering that I made the recipe up as I went along, I don't think it turned out too bad.

The flavour is intense with tomato with an agreeable balance of sweet and sourness. The spices give a good background warmth and the whole fennel and kalonji seeds punctuate the chutney with their respective aniseed and earthy flavours.

Overall, the chutney has a good depth of fruitiness with layers of spicy fragrance.

I reckon it'll be a good partner to a mature cheddar cheese and also great for perking up any leftover cold turkey.

*Kalonji seeds are also known as black onion or nigella seeds.

Too Many Tomatoes

Actually you can’t have too many tomatoes, especially home grown ones. Fortunately they are so versatile that you never run out of uses for them.

There’s just the problem of using them all up before they turn squishy and mouldy, that’s when I thought about preserving some of them.

I think I’ve already perfected the technique of oven-drying them (there’s a description of how to do that in a previous post) so I thought why not put the oven dried tomatoes into a jar and preserve them in oil?

I made sure I sterilised the jar first, of course, to kill off any potential contaminants and then packed it almost to the top. Then I added a couple of tablespoons of red wine vinegar and topped it up with olive oil, making sure the tomatoes were completely covered. Then I just tipped the jar back and forth so that any air bubbles were expelled, then sealed it with the lid.

I reckon that they should keep very well, and as long as I use them up within a month after opening, they should be okay.
I’m looking forward to using them in sauces, on pizza, in salads and who knows what else?

Buy the Jar

Grilled Fresh Sardines with Roasted Marinated Vegetables and Gremolata

Sardines are great. It doesn't matter whether they're from a tin or fresh, they're always good. I picked up some Cornish ones the other day, and they were really fresh, smelling of the sea. Their plump silvery bodies looked so inviting.

Although sardines can be eaten whole I prefer not having to deal with any bones whilst eating them, so I set about filleting them. It was very easy as they were of a good size.

Sardines are an oily fish, so something that can stand up to that whilst cutting through the richness was needed to accompany them. Choosing to create a Mediterranean style dish, I slow roasted some tomatoes in the oven, which partly dries them and intensifies the flavour. Just halve some medium sized tomatoes and place them in a baking tray, sprinkle with a little sea salt and sugar and put in a low temperature oven for about 2 hours, or until they have shrunk to about half their original size.
I also cut some red and yellow peppers, courgette, and red onion into large chunks, tossed them in a little olive oil and roasted them in a medium oven until they had softened and taken on some charring at the edges.

The rest was easy. I put the tomatoes and rest of the vegetables into a bowl, added a small splash of red wine vinegar, a good slosh of extra virgin olive oil, a generous pinch of dried oregano, a few capers and lots of freshly ground black pepper.
This I just left to marinade all together while I made the gremolata.

I grated the zest of lemon into a bowl, then add a grated clove of garlic and finely chopped flat-leafed parsley and mixed together well.

All that was left to do was to cook the fish. I laid the glistening sardine fillets, skin side up on a non-stick baking sheet and seasoned with a little salt and pepper. There was no need for any oil – the fish had enough naturally.
Then I put them under a preheated grill on a very high heat, until the skins started to blister and crisp slightly. I didn’t need to turn them over as the fillets were thin enough to allow the heat to penetrate and cook them all the way through.

To serve, I piled the marinated vegetables on to plates along with any liquid and then placed the sardines on top and sprinkled with the gremolata.

Bread was all that was needed to mop up the sweet and succulent juice.