Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.09.2014, Side 32

“Again, we assemble
our frankly gorgeous
plates; again, we sit,
enjoy some wine and
are impressed with our
apparently boundless
culinary talents. ”
32 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 14 — 2014FOOD
Breakfast
Brunch
Lunch
Happy Hour
Dinner
K-Bar is a gastro pub with a Korean, Japa-
nese, Icelandic inspired kitchen and quirky
cocktails. We have eight icelandic craft
beers on tap and over 100 types in bottles.
Open all day from breakfast to late night
snacks. K-Bar is located at Laugavegur 74.
Ask your reception how to find us or find us
on facebook.com/kbarreykjavik
A completely self-taught chef with a
background in retail, event planning, and
interior decorating, Auður opened Salt as
a “teaching kitchen” in 2012. Since then,
her (Icelandic-language) classes—rang-
ing from a macaroon workshop to classic
sauce and cheese-making courses, as
well as guest-taught sessions on regional
cuisines such as Thai, Moroccan and
Japanese—have become quite popular
with locals.
Believing that “the best way to get
to know any country is through your
taste buds,” Auður has also designed an
English-language “Local in Focal” course
for foreigners. (No eye rolling—Icelandic
food can be really good.) These courses
have been a hit as well. In fact, in May,
‘Food and Travel’ magazine named Salt
one of Europe’s 50 Best Cookery Schools.
Into the kitchen
I sip my coffee and gobble macaroons
as the other participants begin to arrive:
an Ice-landic couple (there to scope out
the course on behalf of travelers), and an
enthusiastic North American couple from
Canada and the US, respectively. Aprons
donned, Auður outlines our menu.
With the weather being as it is, she’s
decided to “whip out a tried and tested
autumn meal,” which will begin with an
ocean trout and pressed potato salad
starter, move on to a “more modern
take on the classic Sunday roast” (a leg
of lamb, that is), and end, she smiles,
with her granny’s pancakes with stewed
rhubarb and skyr cream. “I try to incor-
porate skyr into every meal,” she laughs,
explaining the various health benefits of
the much-beloved staple as she hustles
us into the kitchen.
With no more than six participants in
each class, “Local in Focal” is designed
to be intimate, but Auður’s kitchen is still
spacious and airy,
with half a dozen
wood cooking sta-
tions spread around
the room, each
with its own four-
burner gas stove.
Her design prowess
shows itself in the
details: the bundt
pan pendant lamps,
the robin’s egg blue
standing mixers, the
crystal chandelier
that hangs over the
dinner table in the
back corner, and
which she admits
she found on the
cheap during a visit
to the States. It’s a
warm, comfortable
shabby-chic vibe which similarly inflects
her hands-on yet relaxed teaching style.
Potato-crushing giants
Divided into two or three cooks at each
station, we start, somewhat unexpect-
edly, at the finish, mixing the pancake
batter so that it has time to settle.
There’s not much to this, but it needs
to be done in a specific order, and the
liquid only pulsed ever-so-briefly in the
blender. “The blender,” Auður muses.
“That’s the best invention since, I don’t
know—toothpaste.”
Our dessert now well in hand, we
start preparing the pressed potato salad
and the ocean trout, the former of which
will involve the ab-
solutely delightful
process of crushing
(cooled) potatoes
with our fists, like
giants, and the latter
of which will intro-
duce us to the un-
expectedly easy, but
impressively elegant
sous vide cooking
method. (For those
who don’t spend a
lot of time loitering
around food blogs
or watching cook-
ing shows, sous vide
is basically just slow
cooking your ingre-
dient in a sealed bag
submerged in a hot
water bath, so that it
comes out extremely tender.)
Although there are many small
tasks that would be a lot for one home
cook to juggle, it must be noted that it is
occasionally difficult to find enough for
five people to do in the kitchen—chop-
ping shallots and boiling rutabagas are
pretty much one-person jobs. But as
the various scents start combining and
our dishes start coming together, no
one is com-plaining.
Once our ocean trout has cooked to
a velvety, melty texture, we’re ready to
plate our ap-petizer. Auður shows us how
I walk into Salt Eldhús (“Salt Kitchen”) on a rainy summer afternoon that feels chilly
enough to be fall. Shaking off in the vestibule, I’m met by owner Auður Ögn Árnadóttir,
who shakes my hand cheerfully and invites me to help myself to a cup of coffee and one
of her homemade, rainbow-hued macaroons—her specialty.
Photos
Matt Eisman
Words
Larissa Kyzer
Everyone’s A Chef
Fine Icelandic cuisine made simple
at Salt Eldhús