[Sca-cooks] Tony Bourdain Iceland Special

[Stefan li Rous]

Phlip mentioned:
  >>>>
 > I do feel they gave a bit of a short shrift to Iceland but I think
 > that
 > is part of the producer's fault. I think he could have been exposed
 > to better foods and times. I wonder how Nanna would feel about
 > some of the stuff he was fed.

Well, yesterday I was chatting with Paul Buell, who's quite familiar
with Iceland, and I was mentioning I wanted a copy of Nanna's book. His
response was that Icelandic cooking was pretty basic- boil fish, add  
a bit of
salt and pepper, and serve ;-)
<<<<

I hope Paul Buell was joking. If not, then I don't think he knows  
modern Icelandic cooking, much less historic Icelandic cooking.  
Nanna's book, as well as her comments on this list, make it quite  
clear that salt was in short supply in historic Iceland and pepper  
even more so. I'm not sure, but even the fishing may have been  
limited to close inshore work since they fairly quickly loss their  
shipbuilding technology in the first centuries after settlement and  
most of their large trees and forests in the remaining time. Enough  
that one of the reasons that Iceland was so isolated was they no  
longer had their own large ships and had to depend upon occasional  
traders from Scandinavia for what little trade there was.

I'm not sure what this television show had to say about Iceland, as  
unfortunately I didn't see the original message about this show until  
the show was halfway over, and my wife was watching something else at  
that time.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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