Iceland, fall eats, and current favorites
There’s nothing quite as exhilarating as the feeling of shutting down your work email on a Friday afternoon, setting your out of office, and knowing that you have the next week off of vacation (although, let’s face it, the vacation doesn’t really start until you’re on the plane and off the tarmac. At that point, there’s nothing more you can do — you’ve packed all you can pack, you’ve sent every last email you could think of, and vacation mode is officially on).
Earlier this month, my husband and I traveled to Iceland for our honeymoon. While we booked this trip well before we were engaged as a “pandemic special” through the airline, it happened to work out that it was the first trip after we were married so voila! De facto honeymoon.
For almost five straight days, we ate and drank our way throughout Reykjavik.
At our hotel breakfast each day, we ate toast smothered in Icelandic butter, thin slices of cheese and hard-boiled eggs on slabs of crispbread, cucumber slices and tomato wedges, and some of the best yogurt I think I’ve ever had with strawberry jam.
If you think you’ve had rye bread, and you have not had Icelandic rye bread, then you have not had rye bread. The texture of Icelandic rye bread is pillowy, airy and almost like a fluffy cake, and the taste is sweeter than I imagined but also complex and savory — YUM.
Fish is commonplace here and we ate our fair share of it— fresh lightly salted cod, smoked trout and salmon, fish stew (plokkfiskur, which to me tasted like an Icelandic version of shepherd’s pie), and fish soup (my personal favorite).
Aside from fish, Iceland is also brimming with a variety of food that I certainly was not expecting. Asian food in particular has cornered Icelandic food life, and we discovered the most surprising delicious thing of all at a small, fast-casual spot: the best vegan ramen I’ve ever had.
I won’t tell you everything I ate but it was all delicious and I will miss the fresh seafood, along with the uniquely Icelandic noms and munches.
Back in Milwaukee, and all of a sudden it’s fall!
I bought two pumpkins because that seems like a fall requirement and I am back to my post-vacation life cooking routine. I made this fantastic pasta from Ottolenghi’s “Flavor” cookbook, including pasta from scratch, and it was one of those recipes where you go in thinking it will be fairly simple to prepare and then all of a sudden you’re in the weeds and the kitchen is a mess and you’re wondering “is this even worth it?” And then that first bite happens and you realize, yes, yes, it is very much worth it. The crunch and acidity of the pickled jalapenos, combined with the crispy fried shallots that practically taste like candy, and the savoriness of the saffron sauce plus ricotta?! OMG I’m in love.
We weren’t sure if fall was really going to happen this year because it’s been hot but all of a sudden, it’s slightly chilly and that means it’s spicy soup season! I made this Vegetarian Tortilla Soup from NY Times Cooking using homemade veggie broth I had let simmer for hours earlier in the week and it is such a fantastic soup for this time of year — I added more chipotles in adobo and a can of beans and we easily could have eaten the whole pot if we didn’t exhibit a little self restraint.
Tonight I’m thinking crispy potatoes and roasted carrots with cumin and honey and ricotta, since I now have a whole container of ricotta to use up from the pasta. That’s a new problem for me to have so suggestions are welcome.
Happy cooking!