Reykjavík Grapevine - jún. 2023, Blaðsíða 33

33 Food
You can pick up
your copy of The
Reykjavík Grapevine
in Krónan all around
Iceland!
THE PUFFIN
BLANKET
100% WOOL
www.islensk.is
Retalers are Gullfosskaffi,
Rammagerðin and many others
we eat, it is said, tells us who we are.
I say what we cook and sell tells us
what we value. Given that Iceland
is no longer in a phase of scarcity,
it would behove those with culinary
influence to consider their values.
That the reverence reserved for
French haute cuisine isn’t extended
to other cuisines is a reality known
and possibly even expected, mis-
placed as it is. Even the most de-
tached home cook would shudder
with horror if coriander were sug-
gested in place of tarragon – even
as they add bearnaise “extract” to
flavour their eggy concoction. But
all bets are off when it comes to
world cuisines in Iceland. They seem
to exist only to inspire jiffy weekday
dinners with the convenience of a
can of coconut milk or to entice
customers with their otherness,
as one menu attempted by boldly
proclaiming its dipping sauce as
“exotik soyasósa.”
In a bid for authenticity, nomencla-
ture has become the stand-in for the
actual cooking of the dish. Tropes,
rather than technique, seems to be
the magic mantra. Sprinkle enough
words like soy, sesame, kimchi and
kosho, and you’re firmly in Asia. Add
coriander and chilli to the mix and
you’ve arrived in Mexico! Sprinkle
nuts and now you are in “Miðaustur-
land,” an imaginary nation whose
actual geographical boundaries
are no match for the imaginary ones
stretched by local eateries as far
out as Northern Africa.
Despite the sophisticated tech-
niques, expensive ingredients and
man hours demanded by Asian cui-
sine, the expectation is that it should
be cheap food. In all my years spent
eating here, I am yet to see a res-
taurant claiming to do “Asian” food
even attempt velveting, or add tadka
to their “dal” (dal without tadka is
just boiled lentils, no matter how
you spin it), or master steaming and
deep frying. In the absence of ac-
cess to ingredients (an often touted
excuse), technique is a respectful
way to represent a cuisine chefs are
otherwise mining for novelty. The
irony is that chef/investor led high-
end restaurants get a free pass for
their lack of understanding of these
cuisines, whereas restaurants true
to their cuisines are labelled inac-
cessible and foreign.
Continuing to push whitewashed
versions on menus and blogs – often
packaged as a “Nordic take” – rein-
forces the idea that other cultures
are all the same; a bland beige of
homogeneity devoid of nuance, lack-
ing sophistication, and somehow
primitive and therefore less impor-
tant.
We’ve seen the backlash to the crit-
icism of the Icelandic Opera’s pro-
duction of Madama Butterfly, which
was called out for its problematic
stereotypes. The feeling that these
are just cultures we can freely take
from, with zero accountability was
evident in the truly vitriolic comment
sections. How these stereotypes
are both born and supported by
food narratives is a documented
phenomenon.
PASS THE MAYO
When the world has been asking
the hard questions about food ways
and representation, Iceland keeps
going hard at the mayo machine.
I long for a truly bombastic meal
where the funkiness of kimchi is
fully em braced, where dumplings
aren’t shamed with superfluous
showers of crudely cut spring onion
and squirts of mayo instead of be-
ing pre sented as the lovingly pleat-
ed parcels of juicy meat they are.
Where tempura isn’t garishly
coloured shrimp or a grease-fest
of deadbeat mushrooms, but an
ethereal veil of crunch that deli-
cately encases chunks of veggies
and shrimp, their colours bright
and their texture firm and crisp.
I long for aggressively seasoned
warm rice in my sushi. I long for
fun fusion food that takes the best
of two different worlds and fuses
them in imaginative new ways.
I also long for the day when blog-
gers will stop parading problematic
totems as validity (mango chutney,
here’s looking at you). Somehow
ekta indverskur Madras lentils is
hard to digest given that the colonial
name has long been reclaimed by
the native Chennai. Such is the im-
pact of lazy writing that passes
as recipes today that celebrated
Nanna Rögnvaldsdóttir even admits
that she will not do any more cook-
books.
I often hear the refrain that the
Icelandic customer is a stubborn
one, seeking familiarity and safety
when dining out. But that thought
centres only one kind of customer
and wholly ignores the other grow-
ing one. Almost 20% of our popu-
lation is now of foreign origin. In an
environment where dairy monopo-
lies, supermarket chains and import
companies are dictating availability,
restaurants should be held account-
able to both the paying customers
as well the cuisines they are reck-
lessly plumbing from.
We are a diverse society, well on
our way to being a truly multicultural
country. By any global metric, we are
a privileged lot in Iceland. To eat well
and learn from each meal shouldn’t
be a pipedream.
In a bid for authenticity, nomen -
clature has become the stand
in for the actual cooking of the
dish. Tropes, instead of tech-
niques, seems to be the magic
mantra.
Despite the sophisticated
techniques, expensive ingredi-
ents and man hours demanded
by Asian cuisine, the expecta-
tion is that it should be cheap
food.