Iceland review - 2016, Page 66

64 ICELAND REVIEW ICELAND REVIEW 65
TRADITIONS
REINVENTED
Chef Gísli Matthías Auðunsson is
reinventing traditional Icelandic recipes in a
quest to get more of his fellow Icelanders
to embrace traditional Icelandic food.
BY ZOË ROBERT. PHOTOS BY ÁSLAUG SNORRADÓTTIR.
Our goal is to make Icelanders proud of Icelandic
traditional food. Not just during [the month of]
Þorri—because that’s only part of Icelandic tradition-
al food—but the whole year round,” 26-year-old chef Gísli
Matthías Auðunsson tells me from the kitchen of his busy
restaurant, Matur og Drykkur (‘Food and Drink’), located in
the Grandi area near Reykjavík’s old harbor.
The photographer and I visit during the Þorrablót midwinter
festival, a time of year when Icelanders eat traditional food,
mainly consisting of cured meats and fish, in celebration of
old culture. The feast typically includes delicacies like blood
sausage, ram’s testicles and singed sheep head. Gísli says the
sheep’s head, which is first braised, then glazed, caramelized
and served with Icelandic pancakes and sides, Peking duck-
style, has been in such demand this year that the 750 heads he
ordered are almost finished. “They’ve been so popular. Young
people, too, have been ordering them, which has come as a
bit of a surprise.” Foreign tourists have also been keen to try
them, he adds.
At Matur og Drykkur, which is named after a cherished
Icelandic cook book by the same name, originally published
in 1947, Gísli offers dishes which reference Icelandic food
history but are prepared with a twist. “We make Icelandic
traditional food—but try to make it more exciting,” he says.
Dried double-smoked lamb with buttermilk; pickled herring
with rye bread, beets and cured egg yolk; blood pudding, dried
fruits and sherry glaze; sheep-dung-smoked Arctic char and
horseradish on burnt flatbread; crispy seaweed with capelin
roe; fishcakes with mashed potatoes; and rhubarb and fish
stew with smoked haddock and potatoes are all among the
highlights on the menu.
FOOD