Iceland review - 2015, Síða 69

ICELAND REVIEW 67
Through his television
cooking programs,
Sveinn Kjartansson,
acclaimed chef and owner of
Aalto Bistro at the Nordic
House in Reykjavík, has for
many years been showing
Icelanders how to make the
most out of the country’s
natural food resources, in
particular seafood. “I always
try to find a way to use what
I have, what comes up in
the fishing nets,” he says.
In recent years, that has
increasingly included crab.
While not traditionally
used in Nordic cuisine,
crab is popular in other
regions of the world, such
as Southeast Asia and the
Pacific, where Sveinn takes
some of his inspiration.
While there are two crab
species native to Icelandic
coastal waters, the green
crab (Carcinus maenas) and
spider crab (Hyas araneus),
neither have been used
much in cooking because
they contain little meat, and
the little meat they do have
is bitter, Sveinn explains.
Instead it’s the Atlantic rock
crab (Cancer irroratus), which
first arrived here about ten
years ago, that is finding its
way into Icelandic culinary
creations. “The first time I
realized we had rock crab in
Iceland was after watching
these guys, immigrants of
Asian origin, putting out
their nets down by the cove
near my house in Fossvogur,
Reykjavík. One day I went to
FOOD