If you are in any way squeamish at the sight of meat or blood, or you’re a militant vegetarian/Greenpeace member, you probably want to skip this entry. Just scroll on down really quickly past the nasty pictures. If you like, there’s some photos of me making an ass of myself yesterday — but if you’ve already seen those, um… go buy a photo of mine?
Anyway, all links in this entry, apart from one, are ‘safe’. I’m not going to surprise you with some gory, nasty photo, don’t worry. There are at least two graphic photos in the entry itself though — you have been warned. Oh, and if you have no idea why I’m talking about the Faroe Islands, it’s because I’m going there next month!
The Faroe Islands, by virtue of being, literally, in the middle of frackin’ nowhere is a little stuck when it comes to food. Their first airport was built in 1942 by British forces; for the 1500 years leading up to the airport they had to sustain themselves through self-sufficiency alone. The poor island-dwellers haven’t been dealt a very good hand though (and why would people live there in the first place, anyway?): they have some grass, but due to the prevailing winds and inclement weather, the grass isn’t bountiful enough to rear cows for food. Above-ground vegetables are also hard to grow for the same reasons! They have potatoes, but even they are relatively recent import for Christ’s sake. Their primary food source is sheep, which account for something like 50% of their total diet.
(Not actually in the Faroes — just a doe-eyed sheep that I found in Wales years and years ago, which I’ve not shared before!)
Along with sheep, and by far their richest resource, they have the North Atlantic (which happens to be one of the cleanest bodies of water in the world). It’s positively stuffed full of fish and whales, both of which have been farmed for hundreds of years. They also eat seabirds, like puffins — but don’t worry, they’ve been sustainably hunted for 300 years and there are millions of them up there. Even the pilot whale, their whaling website hastens to add, is very gently farmed: an average of 950 have been caught in the last 10 years, which provides 30% of all meat produced in the Faroes! As you can imagine, very little goes to waste — even the blubber is used… or consumed! (If I sell enough Personalised Sebby Landscapes, I will eat whale blubber and photograph it, just for you guys.)
With their four food types out of the way — sheep, fish, bird and whale — I’m now going to wow you with their delicacies. I use the term ‘delicacy’ loosely. Even my Faroese friends tell me that most of these foods should be eaten with your eyes shut and a clothes peg across the bridge of your nose. Only push onwards if you’re interested in what a smoked sheep looks like; you have been warned… again!
In the Faroes the entire concept of artistic, culinary prowess is foreign. Only in recent years, since the second World War, have international dishes begun to pop up (like pizza). Food preparation in the Faroes is rarely anything other than functional. Now, moving on: if you’re a cook yourself, or you studied biology at school, you probably know that salt is a very good preservative. In fact, it was the only preservative we had for hundreds of years! Sailors had big barrels of fish and meat, heavily salted and Old Worlde travellers would often carry salted meat jerky. And up in the Faroes… they have salty wind! Lots and lots of salty wind.
I wish I was making this up but, in the Faroes, meat preparation and preservation — the age-old and finest tradition, the most elite way to cure meat and fish — is to hang it in the salty sea air. While hanging meat is nothing new — we normally do it with smoke, instead of all-natural home-reared ‘salt air’… — the Faroese have gone one further!
They hang whole sheep up. For days and even weeks, they slice that sucker open and hang it up to dry. And, if you go the whole hog and hang it for over a year and eat it raw, you get the finest of all Faroese delicacies: Skerpikjøt.
Yum (you have to admit, it looks truly awesome). Such is the prevalence and popularity of hanging meat, most Faroese houses have out-buildings called ‘hjallur’ that are dedicated to wind-drying. I don’t know if they hang them for months to bring out the flavour, or if they’re just too lazy to light a fire. I’ll be sure to sample it when I visit next month.
As I’ve already hinted, due to their dreary desolation in the middle of the Atlantic, nothing is wasted on the Faroe Islands. They eat whale blubber, something most people will find revolting (though, it’s the same as eating pork rind, no?) but perhaps more disgustingly the only bit of sheep that they have deemed ‘inedible’ is the current contents of its stomach…
(Click here to see the sheep’s head. I didn’t feel comfortable putting it right here on my blog… it’s pretty grim. My inner connoisseur appreciates the two potatoes laid daintily by its side though…)
Yup, brains and eyeballs. And I suppose they eat the intestines too… the Faroese really get love value for money! It also seems they eat a lot of mutton, rather than lamb, so I assume they milk the sheep for years before finally butchering them. If any vegetarians are still reading, I hope you’re impressed with their very efficient use of livestock!
Finally, though I’m not sure if it’s true (my Faroese friends might be playing a mean trick on me), the epitome of blue-ribbon, Michelin-star Faroese catering is… stuffed puffin! But try as I might, this is the best photo I could find of a stuffed puffin.
So, to conclude, the Faroe Islands don’t actually haev any real delicacies. Just really old-school ways of preparing food that some wise-ass Tourism Department decided to label as ‘delicacies’. Smart, cruel bastards.
Hannah
Jun 24, 2009
alright, I have several things to say…First, I’m jealous. I want to go there too. Second, I LOVE PUFFINS! take a picture of one or 1,000….and try and catch one and mail it to me…try and eat one too. I wonder if it tastes like duck? Third, I’m jealous. Fourth, it’s kinda cool that you can hang meat up for a year and still be able to eat it. Lastly, I’m jealous.
Helen
Jun 24, 2009
I guess I can’t really say much, given my complete and utter addiction to biltong… although i would never eat a puffin! They’re so cute!
Good luck with the sampling! be sure to take before, during AND after pictures of your reactions!
Lynda
Jun 24, 2009
I saw the sheep photo and my immediate thought was “Alien face hugger”.
I have a highly developed squeam factor when it comes to food and it looks like their delicacies are either too chewy, too fatty or were too cute when alive.
Melissa
Jun 24, 2009
I bet deep-fried whale blubber (fried in whale fat, naturally) is pretty tasty. And gives you plenty of fat to insulate against the wind with!
sebastian
Jun 24, 2009
Ahhh, BITONG! That takes me back, Helen. My dad went to South Africa and Kenya many years ago, and came back with bitong…
I think it was impala. It was… chewy.
I would think so too, Melissa. Unless whale fat tastes bad for some odd reason. But I’m not generally a fan of ‘skin’ or ‘fat’. My grandmother, she’ll eat all the gristle on her beef and lamb and chicken… she can’t get enough of it. Maybe I should bring her back some whale blubber.
The Faroese don’t look fat from the pictures I’ve seen. Just kind of… wall-eyed, from their incredibly narrow genetic tree. Their girls do look rather cute though… Can I take photos of my reactions before and after going out to their one nightclub that’s still playing hits from the 1990s?
I will try my best to take some photos of puffins, Hannah. Just for you. Don’t they nest on sea-facing cliff faces though…? Might have to take photos from the boat then… but I’ll try my best!
sebastian
Jun 24, 2009
Ach, I missed Lynda. Delightful little avatar you have there, incidentally. I think those are… tusks?
I’m not sure about the whole squeamish thing when it comes to ‘cute animals’. It’s probably something we’ve developed relatively recently with our pet culture (proven by the way they eat dogs over in the Far East, eh?)
But it’s probably no surprise that we like our meat prepared in a way that doesn’t remind us of its original source. That’s why I could never do the whole pork rind thing — it’s almost cannibalistic, brrr! — my dad loves it though, perhaps it appeals to his inner hunter-gatherer…
Lynda
Jun 24, 2009
Hence the decline in the number of butchers with the half carcass behind the counter and the rise of the anonymous plastic packed chunk of meat.
When I said squeamish, I meant all sorts of food, not just ickle fluffy animals; if the texture’s all wrong (seitan, aubergine) or I get a whiff of something I don’t like, then it gets spat out or doesn’t go in the mouth in the first place. Yep, fussy!
Art
Jun 24, 2009
Reminds me of the Swedes (I’m half-Swedish so I only take half responsibility) who salt and dry fish that way. The big delicacy, however, is lutefisk thats been salted and airdried and then cleaned with lye (as in the soap). Surstromming is even worse (or better depending on your tastes): the fish has been buried underground or stored in barrels for monthes rotting and then canned. The smell is unbelievably bad…as you might imagine
sebastian
Jun 24, 2009
Lutefisk! Hah. I actually know of that one — in my WoW guild, we have a few northern Swedes… Goddamn, they’re weirdos. But yeah, they told me about lutefisk… it’s actually pickled in… poison or something? Like, lye is really quite dangerous?
But hey, it’s north Sweden. Weirder things happen up there than lutefisk, eh…?
Why do people do it? It’s the kind of thing you discover by accident, surely: ‘Hey, honey, I found that fish that went missing last year…’ — ‘Sure, we got nothing else to eat, let’s try it!’
‘Mmm, delicious’. But really, it MUST be an acquired taste. Or a rite of passage. Putrescent flesh can’t REALLY taste good… can it…?
Rachel
Jun 24, 2009
I’ve heard of svet, I think it’s sheep’s brain. I wonder if they eat that? *smuggles out a puffin under her cardie* Nothing to see here…
Renee
Jun 24, 2009
I used to think that I wasn’t all that finicky about food and that I would try all sorts of stuff, but I have come to realize that it actually not the case. Very interesting, but I am fairly certain I have no desire to eat the delicacies of the Faroe Islands. After checking google maps, I see where they are in relation to Iceland and the UK… I think I will comfortably say I don’t want to live there. Too cold.
Melissa
Jun 25, 2009
EEeeeeew, I can’t even deal with the idea of eating gristle. I was imagining it to be something like the fatty part of a bacon strip, where you can actually get it crisped up and brown…. Hopefully they’re not just sinking their teeth into some squishy raw fat, OR into a chewy bit of gristle. *shudders*
sebastian
Jun 25, 2009
Yeah… I mean, I can chew gristle OK, if there’s some meat on it. But I can’t imagine there’s much meat attached to whale blubber, not the way they describe it… I think it’s very much meat on one plate, and blubber on the other.
Perhaps it’s deep friend or something… *spreads hands a little hopelessly*
Well you do live in California, Renee, which has one of the most easy-going climates in the world! Especially northern Cali — it’s delightful there! The Faroes aren’t too bad I think — at least, it’s not sub-zero, most of the time. But yeah, from what I can tell, it’s like England or Scotland, only wetter and windier. Like, the epitome of Englishness.
Needless to say, I can’t wait
JPP
Jun 27, 2009
I wondered why you mention the Faroe Islands yesterday but NOW I GET IT!! Sweat!
sebastian
Jun 27, 2009
Sheesh… you can tell who doesn’t read my blog daily… *narrows eyes*