Ever eat a puffin?
This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the exotically beautiful country of Iceland. It was an amazing once in a lifetime experience. I’ve travelled quite a bit and I’ve never experienced a landscape quite like this. It’s actually a great place for a weekend getaway since it’s a mere 5 hour flight to a fantastic glacier climbing, horseback riding, iceberg sighting, whale watch and hot tub soaking experience.
Anyone who reads the Foodie-file regularly knows that I love ethnic foods – I’m a junky for indigenous foods from other countries and love to find little unknown foodie gems. Iceland has a lot to offer, but I can tell you after much wandering and disappointed eating, foodie gems are not really on the menu. To be fair, a country of lava fields, glaciers and boiling thermal waters is a harsh environment for cultivating living things. And like so many other western cultures, the Icelanders have succumbed to the siren song of convenience and fast foods, so many traditional staples have been lost. A few exceptions that have held on include puffin and cormorant. The puffin I had was brined, which seems to be the usual preparation. I was served the breast, it was a dark meat and it tasted like a combination of duck and liver. I know there are a lot of Icelander in Gimli, Manitoba, any of you ever eat a puffin?
There were a few notable exceptions to my foodie experience, and a few other novelty eating experiences I will be sharing in upcoming posts, so keep reading for more about Iceland.
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So, you ate puffin…but you didn’t tell us what you thought of it! Being someone who tolerates duck but can’t get past the idea of what the liver does, describing puffin as somewhere between these two things isn’t getting me on a plane for that weekend getaway.
Angela, there are lots of great reasons to go to Iceland but puffin is not in the top ten. Having said that, it wasn’t bad – it kind of had the similar meaty-ness of liver but not really the taste of liver – more the taste of duck. It was also quite salty because it had been brined and it was in very small pieces. If you were going there I would recommend you try it but if you missed it, there’s no need to cry in your Brennivín (more on this later!)
Puffin! OK, normally it takes a lot to gross me out on the food front, but that’s…blech! Though I’m not sure why I should find puffin more distasteful than, say, quail.
Looking forward to hearing about Brennivin!
-Helen
mmm… quail! I’m making those for Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday (what can I say, it’s Thanksgiving Italian style and half the family hates turkey!)Quail is definitely better than puffin – if they turn out well maybe they will be Monday’s post!