[Sca-cooks] Tony Bourdain Iceland Special

[Stefan li Rous]

I replied to Phlip with:
 > 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.

To which Adamantius asked me:
 >>>
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?
<<<

No. I did consider that, but if Paul Buell said that, his view is  
even more contrary to Nana's comments on modern Icelandic cooking  
then if we just stick to medieval Icelandic foods.  She starts out in  
her book talking about the great variety of foods now available to  
the average Icelander, thanks to modern transportation and  
preservation systems. Her comments on this don't sound like  
"Icelandic cooking is pretty basic today- boil fish, add a bit of  
salt and pepper and serve."

Of course this probably varies depending upon what segment of the  
population someone is watching. If someone came to the U.S. and  
watched many of the school kids, they might easily say "American  
cooking is pretty basic today- Put frozen pizza (or pizza slice) in  
microwave, heat and serve".

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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