When I first decided to come to Iceland, the first thing I did was look up the cuisine online. And I was horrified. Their diet seemed to consist of fermented things and every single part of a sheep. But luckily most Icelanders are also not too fond of traditional Icelandic food, which was designed for surviving long winters, not for taste. We eat a lot of skyr - which is a yogurt-like concoction - bread, pasta, lamb and fish. Fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce and expensive since you can't farm them in Iceland. It all has to be either imported or grown in greenhouses. But tonight, we ate like the Icelanders of old:
That's a sheep's head. We cheated a bit in our preparation of the sheep's head. Traditionally, it is only boiled, but to make it a little more palatable, we grilled it with rosemary and thyme after boiling. What you see here is one sheep's head cut in half. The brain has been removed. You don't actually eat most of the head. Only the jaw muscles, tongue, ear, and eye.
I ate a bit of the jaw and the tongue. The eye and the ear were just too freaky for me. Heck, the tongue was pushing it! It was a very strange texture. Very unsettling. Not to mention the part where your food looks back at you. But otherwise it just tasted like lamb, especially the jaw muscle. We did have supplemental chicken available for dinner - we only cooked one head for 8 people, figuring nobody would want to eat a half by themselves. We were right.
So I can check that off the list! The other delicacy I have to try while I'm here is fermented shark fin. Apparently it has such a bad aftertaste that you have to chase it down with a vodka called the Black Death. Uh oh.
That's a sheep's head. We cheated a bit in our preparation of the sheep's head. Traditionally, it is only boiled, but to make it a little more palatable, we grilled it with rosemary and thyme after boiling. What you see here is one sheep's head cut in half. The brain has been removed. You don't actually eat most of the head. Only the jaw muscles, tongue, ear, and eye.
I ate a bit of the jaw and the tongue. The eye and the ear were just too freaky for me. Heck, the tongue was pushing it! It was a very strange texture. Very unsettling. Not to mention the part where your food looks back at you. But otherwise it just tasted like lamb, especially the jaw muscle. We did have supplemental chicken available for dinner - we only cooked one head for 8 people, figuring nobody would want to eat a half by themselves. We were right.
So I can check that off the list! The other delicacy I have to try while I'm here is fermented shark fin. Apparently it has such a bad aftertaste that you have to chase it down with a vodka called the Black Death. Uh oh.
No comments:
Post a Comment