Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

1 kilo of freshly picked mushrooms (eg. Leccinum scabrum or porcini mushrooms), water, 1 cup of cream, ½ cup of port. Pick 1 kilo of mushrooms, then clean them by brushing off the soil and cutting their stems, before rinsing under running water and drying them. Trim the mushrooms or chop them and fry them in a pan in butter or in a pot with a thick bottom. Season and add a tablespoon of ground thyme if available. Add 2 litres of water and a cube of vegetable bouillon and cream. Take the pot off the stove and add the port. Serve with fresh bread. COKE IN A SMALL GLASS BOTTLE

In the 1970s, or at around the time I was born, it was popular to drink Coke from a small glass bottle through a liquorice straw. The method was as follows: uncap the bottle and slide a liquorice straw into the bottle. Ensure the Coke does not foam over the bottle. The skill lies in sucking up the Coke through the straw. There was also a tradition of leaving the liquorice straw steeped in the Coke for a certain period of time, say ten to fifteen minutes, to allow the liquorice to absorb the liquid in the meantime. The liquorice straw would then swell up, giving the Coke a brownish-grey colour and sticky consistency. The liquorice had to be pulled out of the bottle in time, before the straw started to turn to mush and blocked the neck of the bottle. APPLE PIE FROM GIANT RED APPLES WITH CREAM

The narrator has a vision of giant red apples in a dream. To dream of food is normally a good omen, provided the food is fresh and sufficient for the occasion. The circumstances and individual elements need to be carefully examined, however. Food doesn’t have the same taste in the world of dreams as it does in our wakeful state. On the other hand, dream recipes may have something in common with fictitious ones. An example of a fictitious recipe is the apple tart made out of giant red apples. In reality most people would, of course, use green apples to make an apple pie. There are hundreds of variations of apple tart recipes. The following is a very simple and delicious one. 4 giant red apples, 2 cups of peeled almonds, 1 bar of chocolate (100 grams), 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, 1 cup of white sugar, 1 cup of butter, 1 cup of flour. Peel the apples and slice them into small pieces. Place them at the base of a buttered baking pan. Sprinkle the almonds and chopped chocolate over them, followed by a tablespoon of brown sugar. Mix the flour, sugar and butter so that it turns into a light yellow dough, like marzipan. Roll out the dough with your hands, spreading it over the filling. Press the dough all around the perimeter of the pan. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 25 minutes and eat with whipped cream. GRILLED SNOW BUNTING, HIGHLANDS-STYLE

Please note that the following recipe should not be construed as an incitement to kill small protected feathered birds. It is not unlikely that the foreign hunters targeted the snow buntings because of their lack of familiarity with this species and poor knowledge of local regulations, since as everyone knows snow buntings are a sedentary breed and therefore Icelandic through and through. Overseas, small birds are a popular source of food and often impaled on skewers and then roasted over an open fire. On drizzly November days it is in many ways more suitable to cook small birds in baking trays in the heated electric ovens of highland kitchens. The narrator bears no responsibility for this recipe. 16 snow buntings, 20 pearl onions, salt, pepper, 2 cups of cream, a packet of bacon, mushrooms, 8 slices of white bread, milk, garlic, parsley. Start by plucking the birds. First cut the wings, necks and legs. The necks, if there are any, can be used for the juice. Next cut the skin under the sternum and peel it off like a coat. Then make an incision under the wing bone and extract the innards, gizzard, heart and liver. Put the hearts aside. Rinse the birds, salt and pepper them, both inside and out, and line them up on the draining board while you prepare the filling. Fry the small pieces of bacon and finely cut hearts in butter for 10 minutes. The hearts will give the broth a strong taste. Before frying them, though, make a small incision in each heart to drain the blood from it. Add the chopped mushrooms and garlic. Immerse the slices of white bread, devoid of their crust, in milk. Mix the bacon, hearts, mushrooms, garlic, wet bread, chopped parsley and other spices and stuff the filling into the small birds. Peel the pearl onions and fry them with the birds in butter in the pan for 10 minutes. Brown the birds on all sides. Arrange the birds, side by side, in the baking tray, pour cream on them and bake for 40 minutes. Sixteen snow buntings can easily fit into the average-size baking tray. Eat them with stuffing, green salad and macaroni. ICELANDIC MEAT SOUP

It should be noted that the contents of this soup will vary according to whether it is made in the summer or winter and the availability of vegetables in any given place or time. 1 kilo of lamb meat (shoulder or leg), 2½ litres of water, 2 tablespoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, ½ cup rice (it is good to use brown rice, which you will need to pre-boil, however), 4 tablespoons of oats or barley, 4 tablespoons of dry soup herbs, 1 big turnip or 2 small ones, 10 small potatoes, preferably unpeeled, 5 carrots, 1–2 onions or one leek. Celery can also be used (both stalk and leaves), fresh spinach, garden dock, green cabbage, broccoli and whatever other vegetable happens to be handy in each case . Rinse the meat, cut it into rather small pieces and put it into a pot. Cover with water, salt it, close the lid and boil for 15 minutes. Lift the lid and skim off the froth. Add water to the pot and then the various vegetables, according to the cooking time of each one. Be careful not to overcook the vegetables. Boil it all together until it fuses. It is good to throw some thyme into the soup and some chopped mint, which grows wild in many parts of Iceland and is particularly good with lamb, since it reduces that farm shed taste. SHEEP’S HEAD JELLY

After torching the sheep’s heads, brush them with an abrasive brush to wash away the soot. Next place the heads in lukewarm water and scrub them well, both internally and externally, making sure that you scrape the eyes and ears. Arrange the black heads together in a big pot, salt them and pour water over them, without necessarily covering them. When the pot comes to the boil, brown froth should ooze out of the heads. Seal the pot and boil the heads at a moderate heat for an hour or until the meat loosens from the bone. De-bone the meat and place it in a tin (e.g. Christmas cake tin). Remove the eyeballs, although it is a question of taste whether the eyes and ears should be left in the jelly. Pour a little broth over it to ensure it glues together better. Store under light pressure in the fridge overnight, then turn it upside down and cut it into slices. Sheep’s head jelly is more often than not eaten with turnip mousse or boiled potatoes and white milk sauce. PEPPER COOKIES WITH ICING SUGAR

The baking of pepper cookies in close collaboration with a child is a permanent feature in any household with a kid in the lead-up to Christmas. 150 grams of sugar, 250 grams of syrup, ½ teaspoon of pepper, 2 teaspoons of ginger, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, ½ teaspoon of cloves, 125 grams of butter, 1 egg, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, 400 grams of flour. Mix the sugar, syrup and butter and bring to simmering point. Mix in the baking soda with all the spices, pepper, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Then add the egg and flour. Keep 1–2 cups of flour to knead the dough. Knead the dough on the table with the child. Roll out the dough and let the child cut out the shapes him/herself (Santa Clauses, Christmas trees, bells, angels and reindeer) and decorate the cookies with the icing. Icing: 125 grams of icing sugar and 1–1½ egg whites mixed well together. Colour according to taste. HOT COCOA