“The Faroese food, especially the fermented food, is something you keep to yourself, You eat it, but only if no one is looking.” Poul Andreas Ziska
And those are words from the Faroe Islands' celebrated two Michelin Star chef, Poul Andreas Ziska, whose remote restaurant, serves food from the Faroe Islands traditional food repertoire but cooked in a modern way - à la Noma if you like. In the same article in The New Yorker, from which that quote comes, the founder of Ziska's restaurant, Johannes Jensen who has another highly regarded restaurant Ræst which serves traditional food, traditionally, told Rebecca Mead - The New Yorker writer, as he presented her with her meal:
“You will probably dislike everything you eat. Sorry.”
And she sort of did, saying of one of the dishes she was served:
"The aged lamb on my plate looked like shreds of an automobile tire, and it tasted like something I wouldn’t be able to wash out of my hair for a week."
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the first day of writing a blog without mentioning Nigel or Ottolenghi, so having noticed when I wrote about the website Good Food on Bad Plates, that those kitchen travellers had visited the Faroes and that I had missed it out on my journey from Scandinavia to Iceland, I decided to have a look today. And it has left me with a few questions, some memories as well as having learnt a few things.
First of all a few facts. Here is a map - and as you can see the Faroes are a group of islands - 18 to be exact - roughly halfway between Norway and Iceland. I chose this particular map because it illustrates the British shipping forecast that I used to hear on the radio in my youth. I used to love listening to it - all those wonderful names that to a child were somewhat magical, and lyrical. They rolled off the tongue, possibly lulled me to sleep, but always conjured up dreams off distant unknown places, floating in a windy sea:
"Viking, North and South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, Heligoland (German Bight), Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Trafalgar, Finisterre (FitzRoy), Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faroes, South Iceland (Iceland)"
Until I saw that map I had no idea where some of those places were and possibly because of the mystery of their names, almost didn't want to know. That would have made them real after all. That shipping forecast was begun way back in 1861 by Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, captain of The Beagle, after a disastrous storm in 1859 which wrecked a steam clipper off Anglesey. Initially the storm warnings were delivered by telegraph, but in 1911 they were delivered by radio and continue to this day, even though:
"most ships have onboard technology to provide the Forecast's information, they still use it to check their data" Wikipedia
Maybe it's appropriate that the Faroes are almost the last on that list due to their remoteness. They were settled back in the 9th century by Vikings - the joke being that the Vikings who settled there were so sea-sick they couldn't face going on to Iceland.
In the 12th century it became part of the Danish Kingdom and it still is although it now has autonomy. The population is a mere 50,000 and there are almost twice as many sheep, mostly owned by smallholding farmers for their own use, and so it is unlikely that you will find either fresh or fermented Faroes lamb on sale in the Faroes shops. You might get it in a restaurant however.
There are no trees on the Faroe Islands. Now that is a somewhat amazing thought. Even deserts have the occasional oasis with trees, although I guess the icecaps and the very high mountains do not. How did they keep warm? Is there peat?
Because there are no trees, smoking food for preservation is not an option, but food preservation is vital for a place with such an extreme climate and rocky soil. The seas are abundant of course, and salmon, has become a major export for the islands - 30% of total exports I saw as one estimate. Farmed salmon that is - in the fjiords and offshore. Our kitchen travellers of Good Food on Bad Plates chose to cook salmon in fact - Faroese salmon with rhubarb from a book by Tareq Taylor on the food of Scandinavia and his section on the Faroes, but I suspect that it is not a traditional dish. They chose it over "one of the dishes in the Faroe Islands episode was puffin and lamb tartar (eek)" and possibly a few others too. They loved the salmon though:
"the pairing of the rich, oily, sweet salmon and the tart, sharp, fresh pickled rhubarb was a work of genius, and combining a bit of salmon and a bit of rhubarb in one mouthful was a pure delight. We’d also recommend a glass of sparkling wine to accompany the meal, although we’re not sure quite how Faroese that is…"
Not very Faroese at all of course, but they do apparently make beer. The salmon however is of such high quality that the Japanese love it for sushi and sashimi, and it is sometimes served like this in the islands themselves.
I however, for reasons that will become apparent will not be tempted to try to cook anything from the Faroe Islands, even though I did say that from now on I would try to cook something from the countries that I explore from time to time.
Mostly the natives go for haddock and cod, rather than salmon which are often dried iand fermented in sheds.
Even though there is a similar abundance of shellfish and crustaceans, these are not widely eaten however. There are a few theories as to why - a religious thing from a ban in Leviticus, the fact that the shellfish are more precious as bait to catch the cod than as actual food, and because shellfish have the stigma of being food for the poor.
Before we leave the sea, there is of course, as in Greenland and Iceland, whalemeat and whale blubber, with pilot whales being the main source. The black slices shown here are the meat, the pink, the blubber, as served with plain potatoes - virtually the only vegetable grown on the islands - the others being swedes and rhubarb. No greens. Although there is seaweed. With respect to the whale meat it is a bit less common than it was because the pollution that exists in the seas these days means that the whales have high levels of mercury. And we all know that this is not good from a health point of view, and so the whale fishing is today much restricted, although not quite banned.
Other sea resources include those puffins mentioned above and other sea birds.
But back to those sheep, which it seems are the main source of protein, other than the fish. Here's the thing. It doesn't seem to be eaten fresh - if that's the right word. No roast lamb and two veg here. No, it's fermented - not smoked. Fermented without salt moreover because, it seems you need wood to obtain salt and there is no wood. So they hang it to dry in the open drying sheds for around 9 months by which time is has decayed and absorbed salt from the air. I'm guessing it must freeze a bit as well in the winter, The fish, which are fermented in the same way take 2-3 months. Ræst is an early stage of the decomposition/drying process of the lamb and at this stage it has to be cooked. If it goes for the full time, it can be eaten raw, like ham I suppose.
The locals eat it, but I don't think I saw any foreigner saying that it was delicious. Rachel Mead of The New Yorker, said it had: "a pungency somewhere between Parmesan cheese and death."
Even a supposedly tourist site like Visit Faroe Islands said:
"The taste of the meat aged in open air has almost no reference point. Umami, the fifth flavour, could be a start when trying to describe what biting into a nine-months-old piece of lamb tastes like. The nose will instantly catch an amalgam of beasty perfume evoking memories of a stable, wool and blue cheese. In the mouth, a raw, bestial flavour hits the palate accompanied by a hint of fresh grass."
I suppose some gourmets might find that attractive, but not most of us. Are they trying to tempt us or put us off one wonders. And in a way you would have to wonder why the finished dry product is not good - after all isn't that how they produce the best hams in France, Italy and Spain. Aren't they just air-dried?
In spite of this really very primitive cuisine - if you can call it that - there are nevertheless MIchelin starred chefs at work with the local ingredients. This is how the lamb is presented at Koks - that two MIchelin star restaurant - here it is served with lichen I think. Those Michelin stars gave me another question. How come small remote islands have Michelin ratings whilst Australia does not? So I investigated and it seems:
“From my understanding it’s all a money thing with Michelin. It comes at a great expense to local tourism boards." Nicholas Hill (chef)/Broadsheet
Australia, it seems, reckons it has good enough restaurant award systems of its own so we don't need Michelin. I wonder if the restaurateurs feel that way. Although I do remember the owner's wife of a most wonderful restaurant in a French village saying that when her husband the chef lost his Michelin star, they were almost relieved - much less pressure.
The last question that was raised for me, however, was whether, in fact the locals do eat those dreadful sounding foods in a modern world, so I was pleased to read this from Chris Osburn on the Great British Chefs website:
"Beyond the haute cuisine, Nordic ingenuity and controversial traditions, the way the Faroese eat doesn't seem all that different to anywhere else in northern Europe. As romantic as it is to imagine a society subsisting off a bounty of mussels and foraged herbs, petrol station hot dogs seemed to be the Islands' most ubiquitous snack. And the country's one Burger King at its only shopping centre in ‘downtown’ Torshavn was booming whenever I passed by."
There are no pigs or chickens in the Faroes. Pork and its products, chicken and eggs, veal, lamb and beef are imported. There are a few cows - kept for their milk, from which yoghurt is made, but not cheese - although this is beginning to be made. And as I said - no vegetables or fruits. They make most of their money from those salmon - one of those farms is the third largest in the world. Tourism is most probably an earner as well. I have friends who have been there. Well it's remote, and I'm guessing relatively unspoilt, beautiful in a rugged kind of way and there's always the Northern lights.
One has to wonder, however, whether the inhabitants of the remoter islands have access to those imported goods. And you also have to ask why people live there. Apparently many young people move to Denmark and other Scandinavian countries for higher education and careers, leaving an aging population behind. The government is apparently trying to encourage various IT and business projects. We shall see. But you do have to admire people in a strange kind of way, for staying in such inhospitable parts of our planet. Is it an attachment to that vague concept of Home, or is it just impossible for them to move?
Day one without Nigel or Ottolenghi done. And I'm going away for a three day break, so there might be a gap in posts. Which is sort of cheating so maybe I should make it a two-week break.
BACK IN THE DAY
November 18
2023 - Frozen mangos to Urban Nanna
2022 - Canapés
2018 - Al fresco
2017 - Two small local businesses
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