KLEINUR (TWISTED DOUGHNUTS)
500 grams of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1½ teaspoons of baking soda, 75 grams of margarine, ½ cup sugar, 1 egg, 2 cups of cultured milk. Mix the baking and soda powder with the flour in a bowl. Add the mashed margarine, egg, milk and sugar. Knead the dough and then flatten it out with a rolling pin into rather thick pieces, i.e. up to 1 cm thick. Sprinkle the table with flour before flattening out the dough. Cut the dough into strips of about 4 cm in width. Then cut those into pieces of about 8 cm in length. Cut a small slit in the middle of each piece of dough (future twisted doughnut) and gently pull one end through the slit to make the twists in the doughnuts. Arrange the doughnuts side by side on a tray and leave them there while you heat the oil in a pot. Immerse the doughnuts in the fat and then fish them out again with a perforated spatula when they turn to a brownish colour. Deposit them on fat-absorbent paper, e.g. newspapers, and then move them to an old-fashioned floral bowl or heirloom, even.
SKONSUR (THICK ICELANDIC PANCAKES)
4 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate, 1 egg, milk as required. Ensure the dough is not too thin. Fry on a skillet at medium heat.
FOUR-TIERED MAYONNAISE SANDWICH CAKE (FOR FUNERAL RECEPTIONS)
(Estimated 200 mourners in the church and 80 mourners at the funeral reception.) 5 loaves of white bread, egg, “salmon petals” and parsley for decorating purposes.
Shrimp salad: 7 hard-boiled eggs, 500 grams of shrimp, mayonnaise. Salmon salad: 7 hard-boiled eggs, 1 fillet of smoked salmon, mayonnaise. Tuna fish salad: 7 hard-boiled eggs, canned tuna fish, mayonnaise.
Buy 5 loaves of white bread and cut off the crusts. Cut the bread lengthwise into four slices that will make up the four tiers or layers of the sandwich cake. Choose an adequately sized plate for the cake and place the bottom tier on it. You can make the shrimp salad by mixing the shrimp and chopped hard-boiled eggs with the mayonnaise or a mixture of mayonnaise and crème fraîche or mixture of crème fraîche and fermented AB milk. Salmon and tuna fish salads are prepared in the same manner, except that instead of using shrimp you use finely chopped smoked salmon or mashed tuna fish out of a can. If you like you can add flavour to the mayonnaise salads with a touch of Dijon mustard and herbal salts. Spread the bottom tier with shrimp salad and place the next tier of bread on top of it, over which you then spread salmon salad. The tuna fish salad goes on the top tier of the cake. Finally spread a thin layer of mayonnaise over the top of the cake (the sides too if you like) and decorate it with slices of boiled egg and “salmon petals”. You can also use icing bags to adorn the rim of the cake with mayonnaise puffs, as if you were decorating a cream cake. Chop the parsley and stick a parsley shoot into the salmon petal. The sandwich cake is cut into large slices like a big cream cake. Even though the slicing of this cake may seem a little daunting at first, experience has shown that guests at funeral receptions normally manage the task with surprising skill and without the need for assistance from relatives.
SUSHI (FOR FUNERAL RECEPTIONS)
(Estimated 200 mourners in the church and 80 mourners at the funeral reception. Only some of the mourners are likely to eat sushi, however, which is why alternative dishes should be offered, e.g. see mayonnaise sandwich cake recipe above.) 1 kilo of sushi rice, 25 seaweed sheets (each roll is cut into 7 pieces, which makes 175 pieces), 1 cucumber, 1 avocado, three types of raw fish, e.g. salmon, halibut or cod, trout or salmon roe (jars are OK), wasabi (available in ready-made tubes or as powder in jars to be diluted in water), sesame seeds (approx. 1 teaspoon for each sheet of seaweed), pickled ginger, Japanese soy sauce.
Rinse the rice until the water is almost transparent—about ten times is recommended. Boil the sushi rice, carefully following the instructions on the packet. While the rice is boiling, chop the vegetables and raw fish into very thin strips. Spread out the seaweed sheets and coat four-fifths of each sheet with a thin layer of compressed rice. Sprinkle a teaspoon of sesame seeds over the rice. Garnish with fine strips of vegetable and raw fish. Spread a very thin layer of wasabi paste on the edges of the seaweed sheets and then roll them tightly together, as if you were making a Swiss roll. Slice the roll into reasonably sized morsels with a sharp knife. Put the morsels into a bowl with Japanese soy sauce and eat with pink pickled ginger.
HORSE SAUSAGE MEAT WITH BOILED POTATOES AND WHITE SAUCE
This is a dish that the narrator managed to botch; she therefore does not recommend it. 8 centimetres of horse sausage meat, 2 potatoes, 1 tablespoon of margarine, 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup of milk, salt, sugar. Boil the meat in water for 10 minutes. Allow the potatoes to boil for an excessively long time or at too high a temperature so that they will be overdone and crumble when you try to peel them. To make the white sauce, melt the margarine in a pot with flour and dilute with milk. Add a pinch of salt and sugar. Cook at a moderate heat in an uncovered pot for 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. The sauce should be white, sticky and glistening, preferably without any clots and too much taste. Serve lukewarm.
OVEN-ROASTED LAMB
1 leg of lamb, rosemary, salt, pepper. The meat should be quite muscular and not too fat. If the raw material is good, it is difficult to go wrong with oven-roasted lamb. It is best to use meat that has not been frozen, otherwise it will need to thaw in the fridge for five days and then on the kitchen table for a few hours before being cooked. Turn the meat and remove any fat, if there is any. Brush a drizzle of olive oil on the meat and season with salt, pepper and fresh rosemary. Once upon a time, rosemary used to be included in a bride’s bouquet of flowers because it was believed to provide protection against heart aches. Slip the meat into the oven at a very high heat for 10 minutes. Then move the meat to the bottom of the oven and roast it at a very low heat for up to two hours—but no more than half an hour if the meat has been de-boned. If you like you can put 1 cup of water into the baking tray to get more broth out of the meat. A tablespoon of soy sauce in the sauce pot sharpens the taste. If the sauce fails you can always save it by adding a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar. Eat with traditional side dishes for lamb: caramel potatoes, red cabbage and redcurrant jelly. While you are browning the potatoes, you can also fry slices of lightly boiled turnip in the sugar as well. Drink with a cocktail of malt and orangeade.
CORRECTLY BOILED EGGS
The art of boiling eggs for the correct amount of time is not quite as simple as some people seem to imagine—confident as one may be who hasn’t ended up either boiling en egg for too long, making the outer layer of the yolk turn purple, or for too little, making the white of the egg ooze out between one’s fingers. Why not use an egg-timer then, some might ask? The use of an hourglass requires one’s undivided attention; you can’t just leave it to go and check on a child, for example, or to empty a washing machine. One might as well be staring at the second hand of a watch. If you are feeling insecure about your grasp of the passage of time, scrambled eggs would make a safer option.
HALIBUT SOUP
3 good pieces of halibut with bones (salmon can be used instead). Ask your fishmonger to give you the bones, cuts and heads from the halibut or salmon to use in the broth. 1 litre of water, 1 litre of whey, 4 bay leaves, 4–8 peppercorns, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 7 prunes, ½ cup of raisins, 3 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons of sugar (you can also use syrup), cream. Put the fish heads and bones in a pot with the bay leaves, peppercorns, sea salt, 1 litre of water and 1 litre of whey. Boil for one hour to get a good broth. Filter it through a sieve and pour the clear broth back into the pot. Bring to the boil again and immerse the pieces of fish in the nice broth. Add 7 prunes and half a cup of raisins and cook them slowly with the fish for a few minutes. Take the pieces of fish out of the broth, wrap them in aluminium foil and put them in the oven at moderate heat, while you finish making the soup. Whisk 3 egg yolks and 3 tablespoons of sugar and pour the mixture into the broth. Bring the soup to simmering point again, without, however, allowing it
to boil. Whip the cream and, at the moment of serving the soup, put 1 tablespoon in each bowl. Eat with hot pieces of fish, freshly boiled potatoes and a good cucumber salad.
SILVER TEA
Boil water. Fill one-third of a glass with cold milk and then fill the other two-thirds with boiled water. Flavour with honey. Drink after dinner, with a child who has put on his/her pyjamas, just before brushing his/her teeth. Discuss the events of the day and plan the next day together over silver tea. (Silver tea is not to be confused with priest tea, which is basically a Melrose teabag with a shot of schnapps or hooch and 1 teaspoon of sugar.)
WHALE STEAK
This is another example of a dish prepared by secondary characters, for which the narrator bears limited liability (also see grilled snow bunting, highlands-style). In any case, the passing-on of this whale steak recipe should not in itself be interpreted as a reflection of the narrator’s stand on whale-hunting. It should be pointed out that the meat in question is from a so-called “drift whale”, that is to say a whale that has been beached by providence and not hunted. In fact the provenance of the whale remains a total mystery, since it could just as well have come from over the highlands as the lagoon. It is, nonetheless, an undeniable fact that every now and then one of two things can happen: a sizeable sei whale or baleen whale will get washed up on the shores of a small community without warning or a small porpoise will get entangled in a fishing boat’s net without any hope of being revived, despite the efforts of the crew. This recipe is conceived for four to six people. If you need to feed a higher number than this or indeed the population of an entire village, increase the portions accordingly. As a result, a whole whale may be required. 1 piece of whale meat, salt, pepper, 2 cups of cream. In the past, whale meat used to be left steeped in milk overnight to kill that liver oil taste. Then the meat was generally boiled in a pot for several hours, after being briefly sautéed in margarine. The following is a more modern method in which the meat is handled in a similar way to beef. Cut the whale meat into long, thin slices, removing the nerves and fat if necessary. Pan-fry the meat in olive oil, seasoning it with salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove the meat from the pan while you make cream sauce from the broth with cream. Lower the heat under the sauce, taste and add pepper if needed. Then neatly place the meat in the pan with the sauce. Eat with the side dishes of your choice, e.g. lightly boiled vegetables, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.
LUMMUR (ICELANDIC PANCAKES)
Rice pudding leftovers, (approximately 2 cups), 1 cup of flour, 2 eggs, ½ teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of baking soda, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, 1½ cups of milk, frying butter. Mix everything together in a bowl, adding the milk last. Melt butter in a pan. A four-year-old can make lummur with very little assistance when he/she is, for example, recovering from being drenched in a puddle. Place your assistant on a safe stool by the stove, tie an apron around him and allow him to place the floating dough on the hot pan with a small ladle. If you hold the handle of the pan for the child and make sure he/she doesn’t burn him/herself, the child can easily flip the pancakes with a spatula and then fish them out when they have been browned and place them on a plate. Allow the child to sugar the lummur. Lummur can also be eaten with syrup or jam. It is a good idea to make lummur and hot chocolate while the child’s boots are drying by the oven.
KNITTING BABY SOCKS
This recipe is designed for one baby. In the event of there being twins, two pairs will need to be knitted. The older siblings are expected to knit the socks. Help the child cast 44 stitches on a circular number 3 knitting needle. Allow the child to choose the colour of the yarn. Teach the child to knit in 8-centimetre-long loops and narrow rows (folded over) knitting into the front and back of the stitch alternately. It could take several weeks to knit each row if the child is learning to knit for the first time. The remainder of the sock is knitted back and forth in the garter stitch. When this point is reached, it is a good idea to find some good person with some experience in knitting socks for infants who might be willing to teach the skill to a child. The child can then work on the project every day and knit several stitches from time to time, while the supervisor helps him/her not to lose his/her thread. Allow the garter stitch to start from the centre and behind. Help the child to knit 1 centimetre. Place the first and last stitch in the row to one side while you continue to knit the middle garter stitch and knit a total of 4 centimetres. Now load all the stitches back onto the needle and knit a 3-centimetre top for the sock. Then slip the first and last stitches off the needle and start to knit the sole. Knit an additional 9 centimetres. Slip off all stitches. Weave in the ends of the sock for the child and bend the tops of the sides.
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