Áramót - Hogmanay

Hogmanay or New Year´s Eve is a frenzy of explosions and fire in Iceland. The battery begins around the 27th of December and continues until around the end of January. Áramót itself is hard to describe.. explosions all around in built up areas. I was reminded of live TV broadcasts from war zones. A lovely old couple appeared on the TV news to say that they had phoned the emergency services to ask when the explosions would end but the police couldn´t help, so they filled a flask with coffee and hid in the their bathroom which had no windows until around 3am. Þór did the same.. we put his cage in the bath. I enjoyed it though was rather alarmed at the proximity to houses, cars, people. The boys bought a big cake called Katla for me .. so I got to see an eruption of Katla. Thankfully nobody was hurt. The fireworks picture above was taken close to midnight, but we started the evening by going to an bonfire where children were playing with rockets, then went to Óli´s uncle´s house where they set up a last hot air balloon. There was a wild west feeling to the street full of boys of all ages wielding flares and explosive devices and spoking cigars and drinking beer. Icelanders are mad (madly fun) and strangely there are still some of them alive to set the night sky alight and perhaps a few unwary obstacles that don´t run away fast enough.

Sparkles

Hot air balloons

In depth testing of hot air balloon engineering marked Christmas for Óli, Rikki and their Dad. They look beautiful but there is a hair raising element to watching a burning thing float over the houses of Reykjavík.

Smákökur - Christmas cookie competition

Advent and the lead up to Christmas in Iceland is a time for baking, as it is elsewhere. Here though there is a very special tradition of baking smákökur, small cakes or cookies. Not just one type but as many as you possibly can. The question isn´t have you baked your smákökur this year yet, it´s how many types have you baked and which ones? I don´t know how many there are, perhaps as many recipes as there are for cookies around the world but I spent this December being offered new and exciting cookies at work and at Óli´s family home and thoroughly enjoyed this cultural adventure. Some of the cookies must have origins abroad and some feel very Icelandic, with cinnamon taste. Rúsínukökur are one of my favourites and piparkökur are one of Óli´s so I include them here. Have a look here for some others (in Icelandic).

Rúsínukökur

225g plain flour, 200g butter or margarine, 180g porridge oats, 220g chopped raisins (we minced then in a .. well.. of course, a mincer), 460g sugar, 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 eggs

Mix everything to together except the raisins. Add raisins to mix. Let the dough stand in the fridge for a day and bake the day after. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment (no need to butter baking sheet). Roll the dough into small balls about an inch (2.5 cm approx... in weight, 20g dough balls are big, 15 to 20g is fine) in diameter and place on baking sheet leaving a lot of space between them because they completely flatten out when cooked. Bake for 9 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Piparkökur

500g plain flour, 500g soft dark brown sugar, 250g soft butter or margarine, 2 eggs, 5 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 2 teaspoons of ginger, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground cloves, half a teaspoon of pepper.

Mix everything together into a dough. It will feel grainy because of the sugar but that´s ok. If you can get caster sugar this would be better. Roll the dough into cylinder 3-4 cm in diameter and wrap in clingfilm. It needs to be in the fridge for at least a few hours so best to do this the day before. Slice the dough into 1 to 1.5cm slices. Bake for 9-11 minutes at 200 degrees C. We baked ours for 8.5 minutes and after that they got too dark underneath. Óli says this makes enough to fill a standard-sized Mum cookie box. This means little to me and Óli´s Mum is a busy and wonderful cook and has what appears to be an infinite number of cookie boxes of all sizes. Let´s say this makes plenty. Apparently though we are doubling the recipe next year.. 2 of everything.

Christmas tree hunt

Christmas puddings - serve flaming

Christmas baking rule number 1 .. never bake only one of anything. Two Christmas cakes, two Christmas puddings also. At least two batches of favourite Christmas cookies or smákökur.

Christmas baking rule number 2 .. always sample ingredients prior to inclusion in recipe .. dried fruit, glacé cherries, brandy, sherry..

Óli’s general Christmas rule .. set fire to as many things as possible.

On holiday in Scotland in November I found individual Christmas puddings for sale way before advent even. Along with mulled wine and mince pies. Maybe like hot cross buns they will become year-round delights. But does that remove the delight? Thankfully we arrived just a little too early for the Christmas shopping carols, otherwise our hunt for Christmas presents in 2 days would have been even more trying that it was. Living in Iceland it is hard to go to the world outside without feeling like a child in a sweetie shop when presented with a big range of shops, culinary delicacies and prices which don’t break the bank. Mmm.. cheese, black pudding, .. shoes. I read once, when working over Christmas in a book shop, that the incessant playing of Christmas carols in the high street has a measurable detrimental effect to the mental health of shop workers. I can well believe it and I think I am still struggling to recover. Well, Christmas pudding joined the list of Scottish hits and true to style we decided to make our own. We spent the summer squashing berries and stirring pots of gooey blood so Christmas puddings really had to be homemade. Anyway, the suitcases were too stuffed with secret Christmas presents, glacé cherries, cheeses, haggi and black puddings for any shop-bought Christmas food.

Step 1, gather rather ugly but practical plastic pudding basins from Lakeland plastics. No chance I am messing with string and fancy knots a la Delia after the black pudding scenario. Step 2, gather all fruit left over from Christmas cakes and brandy stored away from Óli. Dig out trusty “Mrs. Beeton’s Favourite Recipes” book. Very small, it always hides behind the fancy, shiny, glossy photographic coffee-table type cookbooks which I hardly use. However, once tracked down it is a cookbook to be treasured, with age-old standards such as roast beef and yorkshire puddings, eccles cakes and .. Christmas puddings. Mrs. Beeton’s recipes work for me, Jamie Oliver’s don’t.

Mrs. Beeton was pretty amazing .. her book on household management became Britain’s most famous cookbook and despite the wealth of glossy modern books on cooking and food probably remains so. Originally published as a collection of articles from the "The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine", "The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc. – also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort." was published as a complete volume in 1961. Phew, was anyone left out of that list? I suppose the etc. etc. covers them. Just imagine the acronym. Also called Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management or Mrs. Beeton’s Cookbook. It is now mostly available on-line where you can also read about the history of a Victorian household. Times for people in Britain really were different then. She died aged 28 after giving birth, like many others of her era.

This recipe makes 4 puddings, each in a 1 pint sized basin. What on earth do you do with 4 puddings? I think this dates back from the days of 16-person families. One spoonful of this Christmas pudding is enough to satisfy a craving for rich food for at least a week. So, it was Christmas, we halved the recipe and made two, following rule number 1 and ate about one sixth as a serving each, enough to make it almost impossible to move for a few hours. The rather disgusting, yet traditional, Christmas feeling.

Ingredients: 225g (8oz) plain flour, pinch (meaning a little, I have little hands so that’s very small) of salt, pinch (again) of coriander, teaspoon ground ginger, teaspoon cinnamon, teaspoon mixed spice (I think it is a UK thing ..includes ), teaspoon grated nutmeg, 50g (2oz) chopped almonds, 450g (1lb) soft brown sugar (dark makes a nicer colour), 275g (10oz) shredded suet (beef fat, from Scotland, do not use chopped Icelandic lamb fat.. yucky yuck yuck), 275g (10oz) precious sultanas, 275g (10oz) currants or chopped figs or dates if currants have suddenly become more precious than gold.. maybe everybody was making Christmas puddings, 225g (8oz) raisins, 225g (8oz) mixed peel, 200g stale white breadcrumbs, 6 eggs, 75ml stout (e.g. Guinness.. give remaining to Óli, make a friend for the day), 50ml brandy (or to taste.. I wonder what becomes too much), tablespoon of rum, juice of 1 orange, 150-300ml (1/4 to 1/2 pint) milk. Not entirely authentic .. we added the figs (Figgy Pudding), cinnamon and coriander (because it didn’t smell Christmassy enough and most Icelandic baking has some cinnamon) and the rum (to dilute the brandy!). Like with the Christmas cake do the cooking show thing of measuring out everything into cute little bowls before mixing together otherwise something is bound to get missed. I felt a little silly with my long list, ticking everything off .. just needed a clipboard and to push my glasses to the end of my nose. Find someone else to do the washing up.

Method: Mix all dry things together (flour, salt, spices – you can sieve these if you wish, I don’t think it matters – dried fruits, almonds, sugar, suet and breadcrumbs). Beat together eggs, stout, rum, brandy, orange juice and 150ml milk. This really isn’t a pretty combination. Gradually stir this into the dry ingredients until you get a soft dropping consistency, which means what I ask? .. it drops softly, note dropping not dripping, soft and will drop off the spoon I suppose, but having investigated this now to some degree that can mean almost anything.. I’d aim for something like slightly melted ice cream. Put the mixture into four (if using the whole recipe and feeding your entire neighbourhood or one Edinburgh tenement) plastic pudding basins and cover with the lids. Leave about a 1 cm space between the pudding mixture and the lid. We overfilled one and of course it popped and then became too dry inside. Put into deep boiling water in a very big pan (big enough to boil yer head; really I don’t boil heads, its just a turn of phrase .. and reminds me of student fieldtrips and accurate measurements of boulder sizes.. “It was as big as my head”, perfectly describing the boulder in question and giving a lovely impression of the degree of roundness and density also, see attached head in appendix for calibration of the scale). Boil steadily for 6 to 7 hours. Puddings not heads. You need to be at home for this to top up the water now and again and to stop your children and pets climbing into the pot. It will be a slightly darker colour when cooked and you will see some tasty sweet syrupy juices in it. Let it cool, wrap tightly in foil and place in the fridge. Keep for as long as 12 months or preferably at least 1 month before eating. We had one at Hogmanay since there was no space after the turkey at Christmas and another for our Burns supper around a month later. The Burns night one was definitely better.

Reheat before serving either in the microwave for a few minutes or by boiling again for 1 and half hours. Leave to stand for five minutes or so before serving. Serve flaming! Heat an eggcup full of brandy for a few seconds in a microwave or in a small pan. Pour over up-turned pudding and set alight. Do not place under paper lampshade over the table. Whoosh! Good with cream or ice cream. How can anyone really seriously consider sweet brandy sauce?

Christmas cakes

My first Christmas away from a UK family so lets do it right. What do we need? A real Christmas cake, a Christmas pudding, Christmas dinner, crackers, tinsel, Christmas cards.. First the baking.

As predicted after baking fruitcake, Christmas cake was a drama. But fun. I bought decorations when in Edinburgh in November and hoarded dried fruit, putting the sherry, sultanas and glacé cherries out of reach of even Óli. I needed a set of steps to reach them. Mum gave me her recipe and we got hold of one from Delia online. We made two cakes.. Mum´s real Christmas cake with lots of halved cherries and Delia´s rich traditional cake which of course can´t beat Mum´s one. But being part of the real cultural experience I was told we had to have the traditional as well as the Mum version. I am writing this in March and .. well.. all the Mum cake disappeared before New Year but we have still got a small wedge of the Delia one wrapped in foil in the cupboard. Mum, can I give away the recipe?





For once it really is worth doing the cooking show thing of measuring everything into little bowls and placing them in the order of appearance in front of you. Tick each one off on the list. Prevents 4 times the amount of sultanas (so no more fruit cakes until next foreign trip and no Christmas pudding) and also prevents subtle theft of cherries to the detriment of the cake. More cherries in the cake the better, less cherries directly into Óli the better. Follow the secret recipe (is it secret Mum?) and place in a round tin, 8" diameter. Put brown paper or baking parchment around it and make a paper lid to stop it burning. Cook for about 3 hours. Feed with sherry once per week at least. Then, cover with marzipan rolled to a sensible thickness, less than 1cm perhaps. Make royal icing and forget to include gelatine and create a snowscene on your cake. Make everything nice and spiky. Break teeth on hard icing but enjoy cake.

Slátur and a not so full Scottish breakfast

Slátur (slaughter), traditional Icelandic food, is prepared every September to October during the peak of the sheep slaughtering season. There are two main types of slátur, blóðmör or blood pudding and lifrapylsa or liver pudding. The first is similar to British black pudding and the latter similar to haggis, though both without the spices and much smoother in texture. We both like the Scottish versions of slátur and Óli likes some Icelandic versions so we thought we´d have a go.. the plan was to make 4 things .. Scottish black pudding and haggis and Icelandic blóðmör and lifrapylsa. We only go as far as part 1, Scottish black pudding..

Ingredients: sheep's blood, sheep's fat (chopped), chopped onions, oatmeal, herbs and spices (nutmeg, cayenne pepper, thyme, pepper, salt), full fat milk, sausage skins, strong stomach (your own)



Method: Step one, ask your friendly chef-turned-meat-factory-worker friend for some plastic sausage skins. Then, take a trip to your local supermarket where they have an angelic and helpful slátur adviser to guide you through your options. Leave the sheep´s heads alone and head for the bottles of fresh (or frozen) blood and chopped sheep fat. Try not to think too hard about what you are buying. Grab one carton of full cream milk and some onions. Take your goodies home. Dig out the precious bag of Alford oatmeal and raid the cupboards for lots of spices. Put on the biggest apron you have. Chop that fat some more and your onions too. Pour the thick gooey blood into a big, hopefully but ultimately of course not splash-proof, bowl. Stir. Keep thinking about spring flowers or other non-morbid topics. Add fat, chopped onions, oatmeal, milk and spices. Put aside camera which is getting cover in splashes of yuck. Construct a sausage filling contraption from the largest funnel you have. Fill sausages and spill goo all over yourself and the floor. Sit on floor tying string at regular intervals along probably the world longest bag of bloody goo. Place wobbly, smelly sausage cases in oven with some water. Poach for 3 hours. Put in freezer to hide because experience was so messy and smelly and yucky. Take one sample black pudding out of freezer some weeks later when feeling brave and dreaming of the famous full Scottish breakfast. Slice black pudding, look disappointed at distribution of onions and oatmeal, fry and discard. Enjoy untainted bacon, eggs and beans.

Lesson learnt: For a good recipe, try elsewhere. Resolve to buy local specialities at Melabuðin and import Stornoway black pudding in future.

Snæfellsnes

Snæfellsnes is by far at its prettiest in autumn when the light is low and there is a dusting of snow on the mountains. Step out of the car and you´ll probably be blown away.

Fruit loaf

Apparently this loaf is worth a picture .. or so Óli says .. though the taste really should be captured instead since it looks pretty plain and tastes really yummy. In Iceland fruitcakes are special.. sultanas are imported from the UK in boxes of textbooks and school notes posted on the land route .. by truck, by sea for cheapest possible, hope-it-arrives-one-day type price.. glacé cherries are crammed into the corners of suitcases and the small rucksac side pockets of little use that always rip in aeroplanes, self-raising flour is made at home. After some searching I finally found a reliable recipe for self raising flour that produced a quantity of less than 1 stone. Imagine the drama for Christmas cake and Christmas pudding!

Ingredients: 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, 1 cup sultanas (land shipped), 1 cup raisins, 2 level teaspoons of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), 4 ounces (approximately 115g) of margarine (or best Icelandic butter), 2 eggs, 2 cups of self raising flour (or 2 cups of plain flour, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (yes, more) and 2 and a half teaspoons of cream of tartar, sold in the spice section not the baking section of the supermarket.. imagine how long it took to find that .. 6 whole months without Scottish baking). You can replace the dried fruit with 225g of any dried fruit.

Method:
1. Put all the ingredients except the flour mix and the eggs in a pan*. Boil for 15 minutes. Smells good.
2. Cool then beat in2 eggs and the flour mixture.
3. Mix well until smooth. Spoon or scoop into a greased loaf tin.
4. Bake in a moderate oven (160-180C/gas mark 3-4) for 45 minutes. Length of time may vary depending on oven and size and shape of baking tin.
5. Cut off four slices and freeze for producing later when Kate has forgotten about the loaf and misses home, or for sneaky midnight feasts which you don´t tell Kate about.

* Pan is a pot in Iceland, a frying pan is a pan. Might work, could be messy.

Viðfjörður, mystery trip to east Iceland

Waking up horrendously early in the pitch black of a February morning I was bundled into the car with what I would need to stay in a "summer" house for a night .. with no idea of our destination. We left late, as is our wont and rushed out of the city towards the south. We drove.. reached the turn off for Þingvellir (my first guess), headed for Vík í Myrdal (my second guess) and kept going. Further east we hit Höfn in Hornafjörður with barely enough time to refuel and grab a sandwich to feed our famished tummies. Still so far to go.. but yet little clues to our destination.. though I was beginning to guess. We were entering the east of Iceland, Óli´s world, where reindeer run free and where I was completely at his mercy!

As we drove, still late, I guessed we were heading to Neskaupstaður but still no idea where. Thats a fishing town not a summer house. We pulled up by a big building in the port, humphed out our rucksacs and put on our waterproofs, covered everything in black bags and lowered a boat into the water. Ten o´clock at night, in pitch black again we were still on our journey, now across the dark rather scary-looking fjörð and into the night. My first time on such a boat. It was cold and we dashed with apparent focus across the water towards a destination that those around me knew so well they had no need to question navigation or go haltingly, instead catching up on their news from lives in the east and in Reykjavík. They dropped us off at a pier that we couldn´t see, in a fjörð a little around the coast from the town where no lights shone bar our head torches and the only sound was running water. And then they were off, colliding with nets on the way out so as to send back peels of laughter to us left on the shore in the pitch black with just our bags and a fiddle.

We struggled up the deeply dark path and the unusually tall white house appeared ahead of us. Rather ghostly.. but perhaps that affect had as much to do with the stories I´d been hearing over the winter of teenage trips to the house and apparitions and eerie atmospheres encountered there more than the actual sight before me. We went inside and explored with our head torches .. I went around setting gas lamps and little candles in the rooms we were always going into to chase out the shadows. The house has no electricity and no water during the winter when its only very occasional occupancy (apart from the ghosts, who we assume don´t need running water) would allow the pipes to freeze and burst. We set the fire to a roaring, friendly glow and went back into the night to fetch water. Completely light adapted again we could see so little as we walked over the mirey ground to the river with our bottles.. and turning around to look back at the path we were taking so as to be sure to go the correct way, we saw all windows of the house full of that roaring flame. To anyone it would have looked like the house was on fire and we stumbled back to check and found only a cosy living room with the glass cabinet stove full of lively, but perfectly contained, flames.

We spent much of that weekend carrying water! In bottles and buckets, even in a plastic baby bath. The little house at the back has a cleverly designed steam room and shower, all lined beautifully in wood. It looks like a little Scottish croft house but is a luxurious Nordic spa! But, in winter there is no running water..

It was a wonderful weekend.. in February it was so warm that we could go outside in short sleeves amazingly and took a little walk and saw seals and stunning mountains. We explored the attic and looked in the bedrooms and I ran really quickly between candle-lit oases once it got dark. We never saw the ghost but the lack of heating and light makes for cold, drafty patches which contrast alarmingly with the toasty fire and the warm glow of flames.

On Sunday the men from the boat came back to get us and we headed back to Reykjavík and back to reality with full wintery blasting winds and icy roads. It took ten hours to drive east and three days to drive back again. In between we had unexpected spring, wild nature, romance and music and the wonderful 30th birthday present mystery adventure break from the long winter could not have been better. Thank you Óli and also thank you Skúli, Ingvar, Helgi and Óli´s family who helped in the subterfuge.