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Some Icelandic Fish Dishes

- old and new

Iceland is surrounded by some of the best fishing grounds in the world and the catches of the trawlers and fishing boats have made it one of the richest nations in the world, but this has really only fairly recently begun to show to any extent in the cuisine. Icelanders used to boil their fish, or fry it – usually breaded – using the same simple recipes over and over again, and they tended to overcook the fish. This has more or less changed. There is now a wealth of fish recipes to chose from and people have been getting more adventurous, although most still don’t like cod. Many new trends have emerged and fish and shellfish species that few would have dared to eat a few decades ago are now very popular and fetch high prices.

 

Breaded Pan-Fried Haddock
Steikt ýsa í raspi
Serves 4

This has for decades been the second most popular method (after poaching) to prepare haddock and other white fish. The fish pieces are sometimes just dusted in a little seasoned flour but it used to be much more common to cover them with dried bread crumbs. Garishly colored Paxo bread crumbs were almost a requirement in the 1960s and 70s but people now tend to use plain bread crumbs, sometimes homemade. The bread crumbs were sometimes seasoned with a little curry powder or paprika but a modern cook might add some fresh or dried herbs and maybe a pinch of cayenne pepper.

1½ pounds haddock fillets (or other white fish)
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
½ cup dried bread crumbs
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
4 to 6 tablespoons margarine or butter
1 lemon
A few sprigs of parsley (optional)

Skin and bone the fish fillets and cut them into pieces. Lightly whisk egg and milk in a shallow bowl. Mix the bread crumbs and seasonings in another bowl.

Melt the margarine in a frying pan. When it is no longer frothy, dip the fish pieces into the egg mixture, roll them in bread crumbs and arrange them in the pan. Lower the heat somewhat and fry the fish at medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes on each side.

Arrange the fish pieces on a serving platter and decorate with lemon wedges and parsley sprigs. Serve with boiled potatoes.

 

Salt Cod with Vegetables
Saltfiskur með grænmeti
Serves 6

The important role that salt fish has played for over two centuries in the Icelandic economy is not reflected in the traditional cuisine. It has often been said that the Portuguese – and probably some other southern European nations as well – have 365 recipes for salt fish. It is also often said that the Icelanders, who are major producers of salt fish and eat a lot of it themselves, have only one recipe, which can be described in two words: Boil it.

While not quite correct, this is not far from the truth either. The first Icelandic fish cookbook, 160 Fish Dishes, published in 1939, does have five salt fish recipes – but one of them is for poached salt fish, and three are for dealing with leftover poached salt fish.

The fish is traditionally served with boiled potatoes and rutabagas, and some melted fat – sheep tallow, margarine or butter. These days carrots are often served with salt fish, and sometimes broccoli or other vegetables as well. Most people buy their fish already soaked.

4 medium carrots
2 medium rutabagas (swedes)
Salt
8 medium potatoes
2 pounds soaked salt cod

Peel or scrape the carrots and cut them into pieces. Peel the rutabagas and cut them into chunks. Place carrots and rutabagas in a saucepan, add water to cover, bring to a boil, salt lightly and simmer for around 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain.

Meanwhile, boil the potatoes until tender, let them cool slightly, and peel them. Cut the salt cod into fairly large pieces and place them in a saucepan. Add cold water to cover, bring slowly to a boil and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes, or until just cooked through.

Arrange fish on a serving platter with the vegetables and serve with melted butter.

 

Cheeks in Pepper Cream Sauce
Kinnar í paprikurjómasósu
Serves 4

Modern cooks have used fish cheeks in many innovative ways: cooked in various types of sauces, baked au gratin, grilled or broiled, quick-fried with vegetables and so on. Or they may be quickly fried in hot oil, then marinated for several hours in olive oil and lemon juice with herbs and spices, and served at room temperature as a starter or a part of a cold buffet. One of the most popular methods is to simmer the cheeks in a creamy sauce.

2 large red bell peppers
1 large green bell pepper
2 shallots, chopped
1 cup cream
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
1½ pounds cod or halibut cheeks, skinned
1 tablespoon olive oil

Core the peppers and thinly slice them. Put the green pepper and one of the red peppers aside. Place the remaining red pepper in a saucepan, pour over the cream, bring to a boil, and simmer, covered, for around 20 minutes.

Let cool slightly, then transfer to a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Season with cayenne pepper, ground pepper and salt. Pour back into the saucepan, add the fish cheeks, bring to a boil and simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, or until the cheeks are cooked.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in another pan and sauté the reserved peppers for a few minutes. Transfer the cheeks to a serving platter, pour the sauce over them, and arrange the pepper slices around the edges.

 

Poached Halibut with Lemon Butter Sauce
Soðin lúða með sítrónusmjörsósu
Serves 4

Halibut is another fish that has always been popular in Iceland, from the earliest times onward. It is quite common, especially by the western and southern coast. The halibut can grow extremely large; the largest ever caught in Icelandic waters was over 10 feet long and weighed around 550 pounds. Although large specimen are occasionally caught these days, small halibuts of a few pounds make up most of the catch. Halibut is no longer actively pursued but will often be mixed in with a catch of other species, so it is always available in shops. An Icelandic fish farm has been having very good results with halibut farming recently.

One of the Icelandic names of the halibut is heilagfiski, “holy fish.” Many legends surround it and a large halibut was usually (but not universally) considered a lucky catch. One legend says that any fisherman who catches increasingly large halibuts in the same spot, especially if they seem be just under the surface, should beware and row away as fast as he can, because the Halibut Mother, supposedly a fearsome creature, is drawing near.

Salt
10 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
4 cross-cut slices of small halibut (around ½ pound each)
½ cup butter
½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
¼ teaspoon curry powder
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped chives
Freshly ground pepper

Bring water to a boil in a pan large enough to accommodate the halibut slices in a single layer and add 1 teaspoon salt, the peppercorns, bay leaf and a little juice from the lemon. Simmer for a few minutes. Add the halibut and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the halibut is just cooked through.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan at very low heat; it should be only just melted, not hot. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, mustard, curry powder and chives. Season with salt and pepper and add more lemon juice, if wished. Remove the cooked halibut slices from the pan with a slotted spoon and arrange them on a serving platter.
Serve with boiled potatoes and the butter sauce.

Curried Ocean Catfish
Steinbítur í karrísósu
Serves 6

The Icelandic name of this large fish, steinbítur, means “stone biter” and it needs its ferocious-looking teeth to crush the clams and sea-urchins that make up part of its diet. Ocean catfish is fairly common in Icelandic waters, especially by the Western Fjords. It was usually dried – and many people still prefer it to any other dried fish – but it was also eaten fresh, either poached or pan-fried.

The fish has to be very fresh, as ocean catfish spoils quickly. This could be one reason why curry is often used in older ocean catfish recipes – it might be an attempt to disguise that the fish is just beginning to go off. It doesn’t work, of course, but as a matter of fact curry fits the fish quite well.

2 pounds ocean catfish fillets
½ lemon
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
2 medium onions
5 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon curry powder, or to taste
1 cup fish stock or water

Skin and bone the fish fillets and cut them crosswise into 1-inch strips. Sprinkle them with juice from the lemon, season with pepper and salt and let stand for 10 to15 minutes.

Peel the onions and slice them thinly. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a frying pan and fry the onion slices at medium heat until they begin to color. Remove them with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Melt the remaining two tablespoons butter in the pan. Mix flour, curry powder and some pepper and salt  and dust the fish pieces with some of it. Fry them quickly at high heat until browned on both sides. Pour in the fish stock or water and bring to a boil.

Place the remaining flour in a jar with ¼ cup cold water, put a lid on and shake until well combined and smooth. Stir the mixture into the pan to thicken the sauce. Add the onions when the sauce is smooth.

Simmer for 5 minutes, adjust seasonings, and serve with boiled potatoes and perhaps some vegetables.
 
Grilled Monkfish
Grillaður skötuselur
Serves 4

If the first sunny spring day in Reykjavík happens to be a Saturday or Sunday, it is a safe bet that barbecue smells will waft through the streets. Iceland is not the ideal barbecue country, weatherwise, but almost everyone owns a gas or charcoal grill and has been waiting throughout the long, cold winter for an opportunity to use it again. Meat is the first choice of most but grilled fish and shellfish are becoming increasingly popular and this grilled monkfish recipe is a fairly typical example. Monkfish is a firm-fleshed fish that lends itself beautifully to grilling.

1½ pounds monkfish tail (1 large tail or 2 smaller)
2 garlic cloves
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt

Clean the fish and remove all membranes. Chop the garlic very finely and put it in a bowl with the lemon juice and zest, the herbs, ground pepper and cayenne pepper. Mix thoroughly and stir in the oil.

Place the fish in a nonreactive dish and spread half the marinade on top. Turn the fish and spread the rest of the marinade over it. Let stand at room temperature for half an hour.

Preheat the grill. Remove the fish from the marinade, salt it and grill it for 5-8 minutes on each side, depending on size.

Serve with grilled potato wedges or boiled potatoes and a green salad or a tomato salad.

 
Poached Lumpfish
Soðinn rauðmagi
Serves 4

The female lumpfish is rarely eaten fresh but when it is caught before the spawning season, it is gutted and beheaded, scored deeply with a knife and hung in a cool place until the flesh turns yellow. Then it is poached. This is called sigin grásleppa and is considered a delicacy by many. My grandfather told me that when he was a newly engaged farm boy with little taste for fish, he visited his fiancée and her family in the fishing village of Húsavík. Sigin grásleppa was on the menu every day and he stayed for a whole week. He simply couldn’t eat it, no matter how he tried, and was terribly embarrassed because his mother-in-law-to-be had to cook a piece of male lumpfish just for him, every single day. Nothing else was on offer; they were poor and during early spring, lumpfish was abundant and very inexpensive.

Male lumpfish can be quite good. It can be pan-fried or poached and served cold in a gelatin mold, but usually it is just poached in the following manner.

2 medium-size male lumpfish
1 bay leaf
6 to 8 peppercorns
1 tablespoon white vinegar
Salt
1 lemon, or more vinegar

Pour boiling water on the fish and scrape off the bony lumps which sit in rows on the sides and across the belly. Cut the fish crosswise into fairly thin slices. Often it is simply scored down to the bone, not cut quite through.

Pour 2 quarts water into a large saucepan, add bay leaf, peppercorns, vinegar, and salt, and bring to a boil. Simmer for a few minutes. Add the lumpfish and simmer for 5 to 8 minutes, depending on thickness.

Remove with a slotted spoon and serve with boiled potatoes and vinegar (traditional) or lemon juice.

Salmon with Wild Sorrel and Mushrooms
Lax með hundasúru og sveppum
Serves 4

In The Iceland Journal of Henry Holland, later physician to Queen Victoria, who travelled the country as a young man in 1810, he often describes the food he was served during his visits to some of Iceland’s leading men. One of the dishes he describes is salmon with wild sorrel, cooked like spinach.

Several types of edible mushrooms grow in Iceland but they were not commonly eaten in earlier times, although eighteenth and nineteenth century sources often say that they “used to be eaten more widely than now.” Those who knew how to use them either cooked them in butter and some whey, or preserved them in a whey marinade.

The following is not an actual old recipe, rather a reconstruction of a dish that may well have been cooked in the early nineteenth century and is equally good today. Two or three cups of chopped spinach can be substituted for the sorrel.

1½ pounds salmon fillets
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup roughly chopped sorrel leaves
½ cup whey (or dry white wine)

Bone the salmon fillets and cut them into pieces. Sprinkle them with pepper and salt and refrigerate for 15 minutes or so.

Melt the butter in a sauté pan and cook the mushrooms at medium heat for 8-10 minutes. Season with pepper and salt.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a frying pan. Dust the salmon with a little flour and fry it at medium high heat for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, or until just cooked through.

Add the chopped sorrel to the mushrooms, mix well and cook for 1 minute, stirring often. Add whey or wine and cook briskly for a minute or two. Pour the mushrooms and sorrel mixture onto a heated serving platter and arrange the salmon on top. Serve with boiled potatoes.

 
Mashed Fish
Plokkfiskur
Serves 4

Old accounts from the school at the bishop’s seat of Skálholt in southern Iceland show that in 1771, the schoolboys were served plokkfiskur every other day, but that dish must have been rather different from the modern version. Probably it was just cooked fish, mashed with lots of butter – and since the fish must have been salted or dried most of the time, this dish can be called an Icelandic version of the famous Provençal brandade de morue – now often made from Icelandic salt cod.

This used to be – and still is – a very popular way of dealing with leftover boiled fish but since most people buy smaller portions these days – and fillets instead of whole fish - there usually aren’t enough leftovers, so fish is often bought especially for this dish. It should then be poached in salted water, drained and left until cool enough to handle.

In the following version the fish is completely broken up and mashed into the sauce but some prefer a flaky version, in which case the sauce should be stirred as little as possible after the fish and potatoes have been added. Others want their plokkfiskur to be as smooth and creamy as possible so they mash their potatoes with a fork or put them through a ricer before adding them to the pan. There are even recipes where both fish and potatoes are put through a mincer.

3-4 cups cooked haddock or cod, fresh or salted
1½ cup milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons flour
3-4 cups cubed cooked potatoes
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
Chives for decoration (optional)

Pick over the fish to ensure that all bones and skin have been removed. Break it up into flakes. Heat the milk in a saucepan, almost to boiling point. Melt the butter in a pan and sauté the onion at medium heat until soft and opaque. Do not let it brown.

Sprinkle the flour over the onion, stir and cook for a minute or two, stirring continuously. Gradually stir in the warm milk, bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the fish and stir briskly to break up the flakes. Add the potatoes and simmer until they are heated through. Season to taste with pepper and salt.

Spoon into a bowl and sprinkle with chives, if wished. Serve hot with dark rye bread and butter.

Many people make a pile of piping hot plokkfiskur on their plate, make an indentation in the top with their fork, and add a large knob of butter.

 

Fishballs
Fiskbollur
Serves 4

Almost every Icelandic housewife has her own recipe for fishballs, and this is mine. I usually make the balls from haddock or cod, but almost any fish can be used, if it isn’t too oily. These fishballs can also be used as an appetizer or finger food – just use a teaspoon to shape the balls, fry them fairly quickly, turning continuously, and serve them hot or cold with a dip.

If half the potato starch and half the flour is omitted, or a little more cream used, the recipe can also be used for a fish pudding. Just spoon the mixture into a well-buttered ovenproof dish, smooth the surface, dot with a little more butter, and bake at 400°F until cooked through and browned on top. The fish mixture can also be layered with some parboiled vegetables, such as broccoli, carrots and bell peppers.

1 pound fish fillets, skinned and boned
1 medium onion
3 tablespoons cream or milk
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons chopped parsley or chives
a small pinch of cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons potato starch or cornstarch
3 tablespoons flour
Oil or margarine for frying

Cut the fish into pieces, peel and chop the onion, and mince them finely in a mincer, or use a food processor. Add cream, butter, herbs and seasonings and mix well. Stir in potato starch or cornstarch and flour. The mixture should be fairly thick and hold its shape well.

Heat the oil or melt the margarine in a large frying pan. Scoop up the fish mixture with a tablespoon, shape it into slightly oblong balls (you can use 2 tablespoons to shape the balls if that is more convenient) and fry them at medium heat for a few minutes on each side, or until nicely browned and cooked through.

Serve with melted butter and boiled potatoes.

Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir