[Sca-cooks] Tony Bourdain Iceland Special

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 23, 2006, at 1:35 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> 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.

Is it possible that Phlip's use of the word "was" [quoting Dr. Buell,  
or possibly not] has led you to assume the discussion was about  
period Icelandic cookery, when in fact it may have been on Icelandic  
cookery in general, or modern Icelandic cookery?

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04