Auður Ólafsdóttir - Butterflies in November

2 tablespoons of cocoa, 2 tablespoons of sugar, ½ cup of water, ½ litre of milk. Mix cocoa and sugar in a pot of water. Heat and stir until boiling point. Add the milk and bring to a boil again. HOT CHOCOLATE FROM REAL CHOCOLATE BARS

2 bars (200 grams) of chocolate, 2 cups of water, 1 litre of fresh milk, a pinch of salt . Break the chocolate over a pot and pour water over it. Heat and stir until the chocolate has melted. Add the milk and bring to a boil. Add a pinch of salt. It is good to drink boiling hot with whipped cream in a country house on a cold and rainy day. You can also pour the hot chocolate into a thermos and take it with an extra cup on a visit to an old people’s home. KLEINUR (TWISTED DOUGHNUTS)

500 grams of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1½ teaspoons of baking soda, 75 grams of margarine, ½ cup sugar, 1 egg, 2 cups of cultured milk. Mix the baking and soda powder with the flour in a bowl. Add the mashed margarine, egg, milk and sugar. Knead the dough and then flatten it out with a rolling pin into rather thick pieces, i.e. up to 1 cm thick. Sprinkle the table with flour before flattening out the dough. Cut the dough into strips of about 4 cm in width. Then cut those into pieces of about 8 cm in length. Cut a small slit in the middle of each piece of dough (future twisted doughnut) and gently pull one end through the slit to make the twists in the doughnuts. Arrange the doughnuts side by side on a tray and leave them there while you heat the oil in a pot. Immerse the doughnuts in the fat and then fish them out again with a perforated spatula when they turn to a brownish colour. Deposit them on fat-absorbent paper, e.g. newspapers, and then move them to an old-fashioned floral bowl or heirloom, even. SKONSUR (THICK ICELANDIC PANCAKES)

4 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate, 1 egg, milk as required. Ensure the dough is not too thin. Fry on a skillet at medium heat. FOUR-TIERED MAYONNAISE SANDWICH CAKE (FOR FUNERAL RECEPTIONS)

(Estimated 200 mourners in the church and 80 mourners at the funeral reception.) 5 loaves of white bread, egg, “salmon petals” and parsley for decorating purposes.

Shrimp salad: 7 hard-boiled eggs, 500 grams of shrimp, mayonnaise. Salmon salad: 7 hard-boiled eggs, 1 fillet of smoked salmon, mayonnaise. Tuna fish salad: 7 hard-boiled eggs, canned tuna fish, mayonnaise.

Buy 5 loaves of white bread and cut off the crusts. Cut the bread lengthwise into four slices that will make up the four tiers or layers of the sandwich cake. Choose an adequately sized plate for the cake and place the bottom tier on it. You can make the shrimp salad by mixing the shrimp and chopped hard-boiled eggs with the mayonnaise or a mixture of mayonnaise and crème fraîche or mixture of crème fraîche and fermented AB milk. Salmon and tuna fish salads are prepared in the same manner, except that instead of using shrimp you use finely chopped smoked salmon or mashed tuna fish out of a can. If you like you can add flavour to the mayonnaise salads with a touch of Dijon mustard and herbal salts. Spread the bottom tier with shrimp salad and place the next tier of bread on top of it, over which you then spread salmon salad. The tuna fish salad goes on the top tier of the cake. Finally spread a thin layer of mayonnaise over the top of the cake (the sides too if you like) and decorate it with slices of boiled egg and “salmon petals”. You can also use icing bags to adorn the rim of the cake with mayonnaise puffs, as if you were decorating a cream cake. Chop the parsley and stick a parsley shoot into the salmon petal. The sandwich cake is cut into large slices like a big cream cake. Even though the slicing of this cake may seem a little daunting at first, experience has shown that guests at funeral receptions normally manage the task with surprising skill and without the need for assistance from relatives. SUSHI (FOR FUNERAL RECEPTIONS)

(Estimated 200 mourners in the church and 80 mourners at the funeral reception. Only some of the mourners are likely to eat sushi, however, which is why alternative dishes should be offered, e.g. see mayonnaise sandwich cake recipe above.) 1 kilo of sushi rice, 25 seaweed sheets (each roll is cut into 7 pieces, which makes 175 pieces), 1 cucumber, 1 avocado, three types of raw fish, e.g. salmon, halibut or cod, trout or salmon roe (jars are OK), wasabi (available in ready-made tubes or as powder in jars to be diluted in water), sesame seeds (approx. 1 teaspoon for each sheet of seaweed), pickled ginger, Japanese soy sauce.

Rinse the rice until the water is almost transparent — about ten times is recommended. Boil the sushi rice, carefully following the instructions on the packet. While the rice is boiling, chop the vegetables and raw fish into very thin strips. Spread out the seaweed sheets and coat four-fifths of each sheet with a thin layer of compressed rice. Sprinkle a teaspoon of sesame seeds over the rice. Garnish with fine strips of vegetable and raw fish. Spread a very thin layer of wasabi paste on the edges of the seaweed sheets and then roll them tightly together, as if you were making a Swiss roll. Slice the roll into reasonably sized morsels with a sharp knife. Put the morsels into a bowl with Japanese soy sauce and eat with pink pickled ginger. HORSE SAUSAGE MEAT WITH BOILED POTATOES AND WHITE SAUCE

This is a dish that the narrator managed to botch; she therefore does not recommend it. 8 centimetres of horse sausage meat, 2 potatoes, 1 tablespoon of margarine, 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup of milk, salt, sugar. Boil the meat in water for 10 minutes. Allow the potatoes to boil for an excessively long time or at too high a temperature so that they will be overdone and crumble when you try to peel them. To make the white sauce, melt the margarine in a pot with flour and dilute with milk. Add a pinch of salt and sugar. Cook at a moderate heat in an uncovered pot for 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. The sauce should be white, sticky and glistening, preferably without any clots and too much taste. Serve lukewarm. OVEN-ROASTED LAMB

1 leg of lamb, rosemary, salt, pepper. The meat should be quite muscular and not too fat. If the raw material is good, it is difficult to go wrong with oven-roasted lamb. It is best to use meat that has not been frozen, otherwise it will need to thaw in the fridge for five days and then on the kitchen table for a few hours before being cooked. Turn the meat and remove any fat, if there is any. Brush a drizzle of olive oil on the meat and season with salt, pepper and fresh rosemary. Once upon a time, rosemary used to be included in a bride’s bouquet of flowers because it was believed to provide protection against heart aches. Slip the meat into the oven at a very high heat for 10 minutes. Then move the meat to the bottom of the oven and roast it at a very low heat for up to two hours — but no more than half an hour if the meat has been de-boned. If you like you can put 1 cup of water into the baking tray to get more broth out of the meat. A tablespoon of soy sauce in the sauce pot sharpens the taste. If the sauce fails you can always save it by adding a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar. Eat with traditional side dishes for lamb: caramel potatoes, red cabbage and redcurrant jelly. While you are browning the potatoes, you can also fry slices of lightly boiled turnip in the sugar as well. Drink with a cocktail of malt and orangeade. CORRECTLY BOILED EGGS

The art of boiling eggs for the correct amount of time is not quite as simple as some people seem to imagine — confident as one may be who hasn’t ended up either boiling en egg for too long, making the outer layer of the yolk turn purple, or for too little, making the white of the egg ooze out between one’s fingers. Why not use an egg-timer then, some might ask? The use of an hourglass requires one’s undivided attention; you can’t just leave it to go and check on a child, for example, or to empty a washing machine. One might as well be staring at the second hand of a watch. If you are feeling insecure about your grasp of the passage of time, scrambled eggs would make a safer option. HALIBUT SOUP