The Ethical Meat Eater

I´ve been postponing this post because there is so much I could write about.  The workshop itself, ethical eating, sustainable living, recipes, food politic and KOJI, that´s a topic I need to explore.  So I´m making this post mostly about the photos I took during the class… I might do separate posts about different topics later.

So many people are going vegan these days.  I´m not going to talk about that or defend myself for eating meat. What I want to talk about today, on the other hand, is a class I took a couple of weeks ago called Charcuterie Intensive – Ethical meat workshop with Meredith Leigh.

This class was held at Bragginn, Studio in Flúðir.  They have more classes coming up.  You can follow them on facebook if you are interested in food-related classes.

It was a very informative and interesting workshop where we worked with a half hog and deconstructed it into sausages, pates, salamis and more.  A class I wouldn´t have taken if it weren’t for my friend who is a butcher and a farmer of grass-fed Gallaway cattle.   I have a passion for anything food-related:  Food politic,  what I eat, cooking, cooking shows, recipes and last but not leas sustainable living as I live in the country.  Therefore I decided to join her on this 2-day class in the countryside.  We made a weekend trip of it where we stayed in a beautiful guesthouse, ate good food and went swimming in a natural hot spring.

We also went out to dinner in Flúðir, in a great company of couple of classmates, at an Ethiopian restaurant called Minilik, a place I totally recommend.

Back to the class…  Meridith is a very knowledgable and informative teacher.  She knows soooo much about curing food and how to truly use almost every part of the animal, so nothing goes to waste.  That´s ethical cooking.

The only beef I eat comes from my farmer friends.  I know them and I know how well they take care of their animals.  The cattle are only grass-fed (I think the only grass-fed cattle in the country)   I wish people who don´t eat meat could show more respect to omnivores.   Things are not black and white.    (The way Indian women working in nut farms are treated because of high demand on cashews because so many people are turning vegan… )  Like I said, this post is not about that, so enough about it.

I will most definitely do more of my own curing, patés and sausages in the future after everything I learned.

If you are interested in cured meat, fresh sausages or smoked ham you can learn more about Meridith on her website http://www.mereleighfood.com/

Now, I´m going to let the photos speak for themselves.

Paté in the making

Lunch is served

 

Koji Bresaola

I need to talk more about Koji later… Google it in the meantime!

Amazing sausage in the making with apricots and habanero.  More about that later.

I was very impressed by the Mortadella, or Malakoff as it is called in Icelandic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fonts fonts fonts…

This is not food related post, unless you need a nice font to use when you make the Christmas or New Years Eve menu in Photoshop 🙂  I love fonts, I can spend hours finding the right font, the size the color, a font that goes well with another font…

Here are few fonts I really like, I put them together like that so I can easily remember their name next time I need a festive font for Christmas.  You think you can find them all at Myfonts.com  for a free download.

Dessert for Christmas and winter wonderland in Iceland

 

I was asked to give readers of a local news paper good recipe for dessert.  I went for the coconut dessert because it is one of the best I´ve had and it is fresh after a heavy Christmas dinner. With some red and green it even looks very festive.

I have blogged about it before and you can find the recipe here.

When we get show in Iceland we sometimes say “King Winter has arrived”. He sure arrived with a blast couple of weeks ago with lots of snow, but the snow was gone few days later.  It was such a pretty sight in the country.

My backyard

By Meðalfellsvatn

Laxárnes seen from Drengur

Soy sauce and not a soy sauce !

If you go out to buy a soy sauce make sure you are buying the real thing.  A real soy sauce has soybeans but a fake one is made with extract, coloring and artificial flavors.

Kikkoman has a real one, La Choy is a chemical soy sauce.

Serious Eats has a good article on soy sauces, you can read it here.

I was reading a book called The fortune Cookie Chronicles and it has a chapter about soy sauce, This book is a good read.

In Iceland we have fresh sushi in almost every supermarket in town.  For me it is getting the fast food stamp on it and I don´t buy it, maybe it´s all good quality and all but I want my sushi high quality to enjoy it the most.

I for example don´t understand why people use surimi in sushi, it´s kind of the “pink slime” in burgers.   Here is the ingredients list I found for surimi  on this page

Alaska Pollock, Water, Egg Whites, Wheat Starch, Sugar, Corn Starch, Sorbitol, Contains 2% or Less of the Following: King Crab Meat, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Extracts of Crab, Oyster, Scallop, Lobster and Fish (Salmon, Anchovy, Bonito, Cutlassfish), Refined Fish Oil (Adds a Trivial Amount of Fat) (Anchovy, Sardine), Rice Wine (Rice, Water, Koji, Yeast, Salt), Sea Salt, Modified Tapioca Starch, Carrageenan, Yam Flour,Hydrolyzed Soy, Corn, and Wheat Proteins, Potassium Chloride, Disodium Inosinate and Guanylate, Sodium Pyrophosphate, Carmine, Paprika. 

I heard that parents of children under the age of 6 years old are advised not to give their kids rice crackers, rice milk or baby food with rice because of arsen you find in rice.  Always check out ingredients on baby food, lots of it has rice in it.

Well this blog ended from being a blog about soy to a blog about soy, sushi, surimi and arsen,

Before i let you go I am gonna end this blog with a recipe of my favorite recipe when we make sushi at home.

salmon in a bowl

• Fresh salmon
• Spring onion
• Fresh ginger, finely chopped
• Sesame seads
• Cucumber
• Avocado

Cut the salmon and the avocado into small bite size bites.  Finely chop the spring onion, ginger and the cucumber. Mix it all together and divide into individual  bowls and add the sesame seeds, a teaspoon or so into each bowl.  Serve with pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce on the side.

If you got some caviar that would be a nice addition.  You can as well use smoked salmon instead of fresh.

 

One of my favorite flower

 

Deep fried pizza dough – Breadsticks

If you ever wondered about how to make breadsticks like you get at some pizza places, I guess it´s just deep fried pizza dough.  I had a pizza dough the other day and wanted to make some kind of doughnuts.  It did taste like bread sticks.  Next time I might make sticks in stead of doughnuts and make a good home made pizza style tomato sauce to go with it.

Pizza doughnuts

• Pizza dough
• Frying oil

Roll out the dough and make doughnuts or sticks.  Deep fry.

Here is a basic pizza dough recipe.

 

 

I also fried the little balls that that make the doughnut hole….

For my husbands birthday we got the local food truck to feed the guests hamburgers.

It was a big hit, the best burgers, made with 100% grass fed local beef.

Me and the birthday boy

We were so lucky to get a decent weather and everyone was outside the whole party.

Flat bread sticks and a creamy cannellini dip

We finally got summer in Iceland, 25°c and all.  We spent yesterday out side and on the veranda with the neighbors next door.  When we get together to eat it is always a food heaven.

What we bring magically goes well together always, we know each others cooking style so we have some practice in the match making.

I have so much growing in my back yard, naturally…it´s just the country side.  So many of the flowers and herbs you can use for tea or healing, by making all kinds of  healing creams.

Yellow Bedstraw and Northern Bedstraw

Like I said, the summer finally arrived and we got good days for 4 days in a row, today it´s raining again…oooh well.  Being able to sit outside and enjoy dinner is a rare thing here in Iceland and when we can we do!

Not often I get my picture taken since It´s me taking the pictures all the time…

My neighbor made a really nice onion pie and I made cannellini dip and flat bread.  I ´ll tell you about the onion pie later.

Flat bread

• Pizza dough

Flatten out the dough in a square and brush it with oil.  Put it in a panini grill or out on the BBQ.  Grill for 2-3 minutes on each side.

Cut the bread as desired.

Cannellini dip

• Cannellini beans, boild (or canned)
• A  handful of fresh basil
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• Salt
• Greek yogurt
• Good quality extra virgin olive oil

Put everything in a mixer and blend until creamy.  Serve in a bowl with the flat bread.

This is the easy version of a cannellini dip.  I have also made one in layers, A layer of cannillini beans, salt, pepper, garlic.  A layer of basil pesto made with basil, extra virgin olive oil and pine nuts or almonds if you like.  The last layer is  a layer of roasted red pepper pesto where I roast red peppers with olive oil, salt and pepper and then I puree it in a blender.

Then you layer this up in a bowl, or you could just mix it all together.

 

Grilled Halloumi with ruccola and red onion – Field trip to the forest

We took a walk in the forest yesterday, I was interested in seeing how the mushroom were growing, since we have had a lousy summer sun wise and lots of rain!  The mushroom season in Iceland is usually around mid of July.

They were looking good and so is the weather forecast for this week, finally no rain!

 

We don´t have many big forests in Iceland and there is a joke that goes like this:

What do you do when you get lost in an Icelandic forest?

…You stand up.

The trees in the forest are often rather small.

The forest close to where I live

Hvalfjörður

For all you who are enjoying your warm summer I have a great dish for you.  Halloumi cheese.  It is best grilled, it does not melt.  Next time on the patio I recommend the Halloumi salad, grilled flat bread and a glass of good crispy white wine.  You can grill the cheese and the flat bread on the BBQ.  I used the Panini grill since, like I have mentioned, we have had a crappy weather this summer.  

Grilled Halloumi with ruccola and grilled flat bread

• Halloumi cheese
• Ruccola
• Red onion
• Pizza dough

Slice the cheese, about 1/2 cm thick.  Finely dice the onion.  Put the salad on a plate, arrange the cheese and the onion on top and serve with flat bread.  For the flat bread,

I rolled out the pizza dough in a pita bread size, and grilled t in the panini grill.

Simple and awesome flavor!

Puffy pancakes and endless runs to the supermarket

I don´t go to supermarkets no more, I am so tired of those big stores full of shit…processed shit. I have a small local, organic store I go to.  They have Icelandic veggies and good stuff from Sicily and from an organic farm in England.

They have a great stone milled flour from Marino.  That is a real flour. I recommend you read the book Cooked by Michael Pollan and especially the chapter about bread.  Don´t buy the cheapest processed flour that has been vitamin added because the have taken all the nutrition out if by too much processing… (READ THAT BOOK! It is good).

I used to go to the supermarket all the time and stock up on canned stuff that usually ended up expired on my shelves. Now I shop fresh stuff only.  Even my spice rack was full of expired spices since I never used them.  Now I don´t buy spices even, just salt, pepper and good oregano.  I use fresh herbs.

I could go on and on about processed food….when you buy canned salsa, vacuum packed tortillas,supermarket roasted chicken and burrito spice blend in a pack …and go home to mix it all together you are NOT cooking from scratch! Enough babbbbling…It is just good to be aware of what you are eating. There is a joke in Iceland now:  It has only rained twice this summer.  First for 23 days and then for 45. As I sit here now this morning, the rain is pouring down.  What else to do on a rainy and windy day but spend it in the kitchen.  I have few things lined up.  For lunch A PIZZA!  I´ve got top quality ingredients for it. I have rhubarb curd I´ve got to do something with.  I went to the fish store yesterday and got all kind of fresh fish, salted cod,  haddock to make the famous Icelandic stew called Plokkfiskur, a Blue Ling that I have not decided what to do with  and a fresh cod for dinner tonight that I will roll up in a batter and deep fry Spanish style.

The rain is at least good for the garden and the flowers…

If you want something nice and easy for brunch this is a super easy and mess free recipe….have a great weekend.

Puffy pancakes

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup good flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-4 tablespoon butter

Heat the oven to 200°c.  Put in a oven proof dish with the butter. Mix together eggs, milk, flour and salt with an electric mixer.  Take out the oven proofed dish with the now melted butter …WARNING, IT IS HOT 🙂 Pour the pancake mix in the dish on top of the butter. Put back in the oven for about 17 minutes. Serve warm with something sweet or savory, bacon, smoked salmon, fruits, jam…

Pulled pork and coleslaw

First day of summer in Iceland was last Thursday, it´s a national holiday.  People dress warm and go out for a stroll in a parade with a big band and scouts holding the Icelandic flag.

Pulled pork

• A piece of pork shoulder
• Salt
• Pepper

Put the shoulder in a pot and fill it with water so the water goes over the pork.  Put in an oven for 6-8 hours at 150°c.

We were at a summerhouse and didn´t have a steak pot but thankfully we found a big pot that fit the oven and the pork.

When the pork is ready you need a good bbq sause to go marinade it with.  I made a pot of sauce and threw the pork in after tearing it a part from the bone, that was easy after all the cooking in the oven.

Use your nicest bbq recipe. It might be something like this.

• Scalott
• Onion
• Fennel
• Chile
• Garlic
• Brown sugar
• Sherry vinegar
• Can chopped tomatoes or can of tomato sauce
• Mustard
• Butter

Chop, melt butter, fry veggies, mix everything together, boil…

Coleslaw is a must with pulled pork.  It freshens it up a bit.  I did a homemade coleslaw and it was very good.

• Cabbage, schredded
• Carrots, shredded
• Creme fraishe
• Salt
• Pepper
• Apples, scredded
• Lemon juice (fresh)

I served it with melted mozzarella and fresh spinach  as well.  Use the best sandwich bread you can find. I used Ciabatta.  Even a homemade naan might be really good.  If you got no good bread a Mexican tortilla or a Roti might work.  (Homemade of course!)

While the pork was boiling we went for a drive around the country side and to see hot springs.  The weather was a bit cold so the hot water made lots of steam.

The group photo

The green.  Sweet colors of nature

The bubblee hot spring…very hot

Chinese Dumplings and I had few interviews last week

Homemade is the best, fresh and you know what you are eating.  I am not much of a pig person, but I can buy organic Icelandic pigs, fed with Icelandic corn and it was very good.  This is the best meal I´ve made so far this year.

Make sure you´ve got quality ingredients.

Chinese Dumplings

Dough

• 4 cups flour
• 2 cups water
• Flour for dusting

Mix, kneed until smooth, set aside for 30 minutes.  Roll it out into a long sausage. cut into small pieces, about 2 cm.  Roll out like a pizza dough

Filling

• 500 g ground pork
• 1 Napa cabbage
• 1-2 spring onions
• 1 tablespoons grated ginger
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil

Dipping sause

• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 tsp finely chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp finely chopped spring onions
• Finely chopped chili pepper (if you like some spice to it)

Mix well.  Serve in a bowl on the side with the dumplings.  You might need to double the recipe or just make as much as you think you need.

Mix everything well together

Flatten out the dough and make thin, round cakes.  I cut mine with a large glass.

Add a tablespoon or two of the ground pork mix to each cake.

First I fry them, then I add water water and boil it.

Serve the dumplings with a good soy sauce

Dip the Dumplings in the Soy

Eat.

I think it´s important to get the bottom of the dumplings fried, not only boil them, to get some texture.

I had some left overs, both dough and ground pork, what do you do?

 Of course you flatten out the dough and make dumpling pizza.

I have been interviewed few times last week because I made apps for kids teaching them the alphabet, numbers, colors and more.  There are no apps like that in Icelandic for kids, probably because this is not a big market.

All our apps so far are for free and we made it in English as well.  Take a look at the website, www.soffia.net,  where you can also play the alphabet and the numbers if you do not have an Android phone.

I made few apps a year ago, then I was on a maternity leave and wanted to do more apps.  I  teamed up with a girl named Helga and we call our project Lean Laundry.

I am very proud of us, we are both on maternity leave now, and between taking care of babies, the house, doing laundry and cooking dinner we make educational multimedia material for babies and kids.

Check us out on Facebook and put a little LIKE on us.

Learn the Icelandic alphabet or if you have kids, take a look at the English version.  More to come!