Icelandic cuisine
The Icelandic cuisine is the national cuisine of Iceland.
History
Due to the harsh climate and the long winter the Icelandic food was very sparse. You barely knew spices and traditionally recycled everything edible. The most important preparation method was cooking.
The base of the Icelandic kitchen was fishing. The cattle in Iceland was limited to sheep, cows and horses. Were eaten therefore seabirds such as auks, guillemots, black guillemots, puffins and their eggs, but also whale and seal meat. The cultivation of cereals and vegetables was hardly possible in Iceland due to the geographical location, as a result, it was hardly used in Icelandic cuisine. Therefore, bread played for centuries no essential role in the diet. Flour was partially replaced with ground Icelandic moss. Beets, cabbage, rhubarb, various Ampfersorten, Angelica and berries such as blueberries, bog bilberries and crow berries delivered vitamins. Juniper berries, thyme Icelandic ( blóðberg ), chervil and cumin served as a condiment.
An Icelandic specialty is skyr, a kind of cream cheese. The whey obtained from cheese production has been used for various drinks and for preserving meat products. The preservation of meat and other foods was very important in order to survive the long winter lets. The methods used for this purpose were smoking, curing, drying, salting, lactic acid insertion and fermentation.
Icelandic cuisine today
Since the 1950s it has in Iceland as well as in Central Europe at the grocery store a wide range of products, which contributes to the diversity of the cuisine. Vegetables, especially tomatoes, is now also grown in geothermally heated greenhouses. Shrimp and many species sea fish on the table, the haddock is preferred to cod. Growing on the island of edible mushrooms such as puff-ball, birch fungus or Wiesenchampignon are now also eaten.
The Icelandic lambs, who spend much of their lives on wild pastures are slaughtered at the age of about six months. Mutton from older animals is considered inferior and is offered almost exclusively processed ( for example, as cured Siedewurst kindabjúgu ). Some of the traditional dishes are still often on the table. These include hangikjöt, skyr and stockfish ( with a little butter smeared a popular snack in Iceland ). Others, such as bjúgu, turnips or salted meats ( saltkjöt ) are considered poor man's food and lose significance.
The most popular drink of the Icelanders is coffee. He is drunk all day until the evening ( Kvöldkaffi ). A special feature is the Molakaffi: for black coffee sugar cubes ( Sykurmolar ) will be served. It is the sugar in your mouth and drink the coffee through this piece, as in the East.
Specialties
Among the specialties of modern Icelandic cuisine include wild salmon, trout and char, wild fowl such as geese, ducks and seabirds and sea fish and lamb. In restaurants and reindeer is served on special occasions.
As a typical Icelandic desserts can Kleinur, a donut, crepe -like pönnukökur, pancakes -like lummur, laufabrauð, a traditional Christmas cookies, cocoa and soup are with biscuits.
Furthermore Rúgbrauð ( rye bread ) is known.
Traditional dishes
The majority of traditional dishes will be served today only on certain feast days and the winter festival Þorrablót. These potatoes and Rübenmus be eaten as a digestive Brennivín is drunk. Many of these foods, called Þorramatur, call for cultural tourism, but also modern Icelanders, due to their consistency, smell or even taste consternation forth.
- SVID, singed and boiled sheep heads
- Hákarl, fermented shark that would be freshly prepared poisonous and inedible
- Lundabaggar, boiled and pickled sheep offal
- INSET skata, fermented skate is as well prepared as the shark, and served on 23 December
- Selshreyfar, pickled seal fins
- Saltkjöt ( cured meats ), is often eaten as a soup
- Sild, marinated herring
- Slátur, boiled in a sheep's stomach offal from sheep, similar to the Palatinate pig's stomach and Scottish Haggis
- Súrsaðir hrútspungar, pickled in whey sheep testicles, partially cooked as a pie