Slátur

(This post is not recommended for squeamish people, vegetarians, and especially squeamish vegetarians)

Iceland is a lovely country with a uniquely beautiful landscape, of course, but there's more to Icelandic exceptionalism than nature... There's food too! :).

As you may recall from this post, traditional food is lamb-based. Well, here's some more lamb-based traditional food! :).

Today's menu is Slátur (which sounds like "slaughter" for good reason). It consists of sewed sheep stomachs filled with a mix, and boiled. Pretty close to Haggis, overall.

There are two mixes: Lifrapylsa, mostly consisting of ground liver and chunks of solid fat; and blóðmör, consisting of sheep blood and fat (yes, you just buy a bottle of sheep blood). In both those mixes there are ingredients such as flour, etc.

So, at Jó's aunt's, we sat down, sewed some stomachs, filled them up, boiled them and ate them! The food tasted fine, although it was a bit of a strong taste (especially the blood sausage) so I didn't feel like eating too much of it.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

The stomachs

Sewing

Nice little pouches...

Filled with liver and whatnot

And now, the blood-fat mix

Sewing the blóðmör

Ta-da!

Boiling

Dinner is served!

Food blogging

Two quick and easy Lebanese recipes.

Hummus

1 can of chick peas (16 oz)
2 tbsp olive oil
3-4 tbsp lemon juice (I had a bit less than that in the picture since I ran out of lemons)
1 1/2 tbsp tahini
1/4 tbsp salt
2 cloves of garlic, smashed (or 1 if you have to meet people afterwards)

Put all the ingredients in a mixer, and mix till smooth! One word of warning though, leave some of the liquids out at first, then add them gradually until it reaches the right consistency. Once you've put too much liquids into the mixture, you end up with watery hummus... And that's not good.

The ingredients

The final result

Kafta patties

Usually these would be made in the shape of a hot dog and grilled over charcoal, but I don't have a grill. You can make any shape you want, of course.

Ingredients:

This is one of those recipes that I don't really measure.. So the numbers here are approximated by looking at the picture after the fact :)

One onion, finely diced
700g ground meat (lamb or beef)
2 tbsp Lebanese 7-spice mix (very important!)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cups chopped parsley

Mix all the ingredients well, and form into the shapes you want. Heat up some oil in a pan and fry the meat for a few minutes. Then transfer to a heated oven (at, say, 200 degrees Celsius) and leave it there for 15-20 minutes.

The ingredients
The raw patties
The end result

You can eat the meat in pitas, with hummus and slices of tomato inside. Or just use them as meatballs. It's all good!

PS: The 7-spice mix is a pre-made mix of different kinds of pepper, cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, coriander...

It's been a long time...

But I'm back :).

The last month or so has been a bit hectic, so I apologize for not posting more frequently. I have pictures from Norway and from some trips in Iceland too that I will be phasing in later. But for now, I will post the pictures from our most recent trip, to Italy (for our first wedding anniversary!).

We first went to an area called the Cinque Terre first, a group of 5 villages on the Northwest coast that seem to hang off the side of mountains. Very picturesque. The weather was great (we had our warmest temperatures in over a year, given the cool Icelandic summer). We even managed to swim in the sea! We had forgotten to bring our swimsuits, but thankfully we did not forget to bring underwear. So we used that.

We stayed in a room with a view of the harbour of one of the 5 villages, hiked on the path between the villages (there are no direct roads between them, only hiking paths), and took a cooking lesson. And just relaxed.

Here are some pictures from that trip.

The view from our room in Manarola

The view of the same town from the harbor, where we went for a dip

The hills looked a lot like Lebanon

Corniglia (that town on the left) from the South

Jó enjoying her seafood pasta there

Corniglia again, this time from the North

Vernazza

Narrow streets in Vernazza

The obligatory cat picture

Jó modeling for some mushroom pictures

Chopping onions

Fresh pasta with mushrooms... Mmm...

Masaman curry

It's been a while since the last recipe... Last time it was a Lebanese recipe, this time it's a Thai one (to celebrate Jó's half Thai-ness! :))

So, Masaman curry:

• It's tasty
• It's pretty easy to cook
  
• So try it!

I got the recipe from this page, though I've made some minor changes to it. I've only done this with chicken, though the recipe calls for beef, and I'm sure lamb would work well too.

Ingredients (for four meals):

• 2 tbsp Masaman curry paste (which you can buy from Mai Thai near Hlemmur, and store in a freezer)
• A cup of coconut milk
• One pound of meat cut into 1 inch cubes
• A couple of large potatoes, cut in 1 inch cubes
• An onion, cut in 8 chunks
• 1/2 cup of cashews (peanuts should work too)
• 1 tbsp salt
• 3 tbsp sugar

Also, I've added 1/2 tbsp of tamarind powder, 1/2 tbsp of cinnamon and some bay leaves, but you don't have to add those.

Heat up the coconut milk and curry paste over med/low heat for five minutes or so, and mix well. Add the meat, and some water (enough to cover up all the meat) and the spices / salt / sugar.

Stew for half an hour or so, then add the potatoes, onion and cashews. Cover and simmer for another half hour, adding water if necessary. When the potatoes are soft enough, you're done!

Note that the flavors in the meal take some time to come together, so you should cook this meal one day before serving it, and reheat a day later. Serve with rice, and enjoy!

There's a good recipe for a cucumber salad on that same page I linked to, you can look it up. Oh, and you should serve this with Rambutans and Longans for dessert, to complete the Thai experience :).

Festival of Nations in Hafnarfjörður

The good people at the Alþjóðahús (literally all-nations-house, an association that helps immigrants in Iceland) were organizing a Festival of Nations in Hafnarfjörður yesterday. This consisted of several booths, each for a country, where people were dressed in local clothing, and had food samples, brochures and whatnot. There was also a stage in the middle of the location where many groups took turns showing off dances and whatnot. Pretty cool stuff!

And, just to state the obvious: free international food is good :). Amal, a Palestinian woman who works at the Alþjóðahús, was telling me to start a Lebanese stand next year :).

After sampling all the food (best stuff: Thai chicken curry and Indonesian lamb on a stick) and watching some performances (best stuff: the dancing Cuban dude) we headed out and walked a bit in Hafnarfjörður. The weather was warm enough that for the first time since coming here 3 months ago, I was able to be outside in just a t-shirt! I asked Jo for a picture to commemorate the momentous occasion.

We stopped at a coffeehouse named "Súfistinn", aka The sufi. Unfortunately the coffee was not brought by whirling dervishes, which would've been quite cool (another unfilled niche!). Finally we took the bus back, stopped by Kringlan to get some food, and headed back home.

On to the pictures (many thanks to Jo for taking most of them, including the harbor pictures from the previous post!):

Thailand reprezent!

Cuban dancing

Indonesian food

Just a T-shirt!!!

The lovely Jo :)

DJ Jo spinning those discs

At the coffeehouse

Almost home

Scrabble

I found out the hard way yesterday that if a game of Scrabble ends with a tie, the winner is the person who had the highest score before the points for the unused tiles are added/deducted.

Jo and I have finally received boxes we meant to ship to ourselves from the US (thanks Mike! :)) and we had our scrabble board in there. We can get quite competitive and pouty when playing, which is kind of amusing. Yesterday's game was one where I fell behind quite a bit from the very beginning (and at that point had a goal of not losing by more than a hundred points). However things kept getting better till we got to the very end, and the only play I could make resulted in a tie, and I was on the losing side of that tie breaking rule.

It was epic. The catastrophic beginnings. The constant struggle, and validation that it brought. The taste of victory, so close... And then, at the photo finish, brought forth by the smallest of margins... A tragedy compounded by the hope that had preceded it. You could easily make a movie about it.

Otherwise, before the game, we tried Tommy's hambugers (Hamborgarabúlla Tómasar), apparently a Reykjavík institution, and a 10 minute walk from our apartment. The burgers were quite tasty, if a bit undercooked.

Food blogging

Today I was in the mood for some Lebanese food. This being Iceland, I had to cook it myself. I'm posting the recipes here in case someone else is interested, but also so that I know where to look them up next time :).

So, I had two variations on a main theme: dough + food on it.

The dough is made this way:

3.5 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
1.5 tsp yeast, dissolved in 1 cup of water + 1/2 cup of milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Mix it all and knead well, adding water or flour until the dough doesn't stick too much to your fingers. Roll the dough in a ball and place in a covered bowl, put in a slightly warm oven for an hour or so until the ball has expanded enough. This should be enough dough for rolling 4 personal pies.

Now, 1st variation: lahm bi agin (aka meat with dough)
300 g ground beef or lamb (or both)
2 tomatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
salt, allspice, cinnamon as desired (the allspice I use is a Lebanese 7-spice mix)

Mix it all. This should be enough to cover 3 pies. Put it in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius, for 12 to 15 minutes (at least until the dough is golden). Squeeze some lemon juice on top before serving, add cayenne pepper if desired.

Lahm bi agin

Second variation: Man'ouche (zaatar pie)
Mix zaatar with just enough oil so that no amount zaatar is left dry. Spread over the dough. Cook at 200 degrees in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes. I tend to make mine quite zaatar heavy, of course :).

Man'ouche

Back from France!

We're just back from a great trip to France. It was a good vacation in which I got to see my family and relax before starting work on Monday.

My cousins had organized a 60 person surprise party at their place in Lyon, for their parent's 30th wedding anniversary (the dad was in on it, my aunt was not). It was a great night in the end, they had a whole series of skits prepared. Lots of eating (Lebanese food! 8 kg of pastries!) and dancing. We stayed in Lyon for a few more days, enjoy the nearby park, and eating much.

We then went to Paris for a few days, where we proceeded to walk around, eat, visit a few things, eat, etc...

There is a store in Paris that sells wines (some for quite cheap), named "Nicolas". They now have a few "bar a vins" open, where they serve food (mostly traditional French fare) and wine by the glass, for quite cheap. You can also get a bottle from their adjoining wine store and open it over food for a minimal fee. It's not a hugely impressive thing, just a small new discovery that I really enjoyed.

Another discovery I made was that brains are not very tasty. We went to a restaurant where I chose the veal head, based on a French man's suggestion, who said that the cheeks were quite tasty. Somehow it did not dawn on me that the head would include the brains... But I decided to try it anyway once it arrived. The texture is a bit of a problem, it's rather gelatinous; in the end it's edible but not that pleasant. The tongue, however, tastes better. All in all, this is good prep for next year's þorrablot.

The whole trip was very food-themed, come to think of it. In addition to all the great food in France, I got 4 kilos of Lebanese pastries from my parents (mostly for gifts), 1 kg of zaatar (dried thyme and toasted sesame), other spices, nuts, French pastries... Enough to last me for a while and give me more cooking options in Iceland.