Ingredients:
250g cooked salmon
250g cooked cod
2 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons flour
Method:
Flake the cooked fish into a bowl. Stir in the mustard, salt & flour, followed by the egg.
Heat a little butter in a skillet.
Take small handfuls of the mixture and form into balls. Place the balls into the hot pan and squash slightly into ‘cakes’.
Cook for about five minutes on each side, until cooked through and golden in colour.
Ingredients:
For the starter;
1 cup beer dregs
1 cup flour
For the bread;
800g/4 cups bread flour
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon honey
550-600ml 1.5-2 cups beer
Method:
To make the starter, mix the beer dregs and flour in a bowl and cover loosely for 24 hours. After this time it should be quite bubbly.
Put the flour, fennel and salt, into a large bowl and mix together.
Add the honey and half a cup of the starter. Slowly add the beer a little at a time, and mix together to form a dough. It needs to be workable, so as not to stick to your hands too much, but too dry and it will fall apart. You can add more or less beer depending on how your dough feels. I find it varies slightly every time.
Tip out onto a work surface and knead for around 5-10 minutes.
Roll your dough into a ball, and dust with a little flour. Put it into a bowl and cover loosely with a damp cloth, to stop it drying out. Leave to prove for at least several hours, but overnight is ideal.
Sourdough takes longer to develop than bread made with shop bought yeast, but benefits from the extra time, as it develops a better flavour. The loaf should increase in size.
Tip your dough back out onto your work surface and carefully deflate it by poking it with your fingers.
Shape your dough into a loaf, and dust with a little flour. Place onto a lightly flour dusted oven tray and prove for another hour.
Heat your oven to 230 degrees Celsius. If you have a Dutch oven put this in your oven to heat as well.
Remove the Dutch oven (if using) and grease the inside with a little butter.
Place your loaf in the centre of the Dutch oven, pop the lid on and put back into the oven to cook for 30 minutes, remove the lid and cook for a further 15 minutes. If you are not using a Dutch oven, cook on an oven tray for 30 minutes and reduce the temperature to 170 degrees Celsius for the last 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven, the loaf should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom.
Leave to cool fully before cutting.
Ingredients:
A knob of Butter
1 onion (roughly chopped)
600g Chicken breast (cut into chunks)
1L chicken stock
2 white or purple carrots (quartered and sliced)
2 sticks of celery (roughly chopped)
A small bunch of wild garlic leaves (Finely chopped)
1 thumb sized piece of ginger (Finely chopped)
Method:
Melt the butter in a large pan or cauldron. Add the onion and fry for a few minutes to soften.
Add the chicken and fry for a few minutes.
Pour over the chicken stock and add the carrots, celery, garlic and ginger. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes.
Serve with fresh sourdough bread
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
200g/1 cup rye flour
2 tablespoons Viking blood (although dried pigs blood works well too)
1 egg
250ml/1 cup beer (or other liquid)
Pinch of salt
Butter
Method:
Whisk together the flour, blood, eggs, beer and salt until smooth.
Melt some butter in a pan and add a ladle full of batter to the pan.
Cook for a minute or 2 on each side, until cooked through.
Serve with berries & honey or bacon
Ingredients:
Butter
5 small turnips
2 teaspoons of mustard seeds
2 teaspoons of thyme
2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs
Method:
Heat some butter in a pan.
Cut the turnips into 1cm squares and add to the pan. Fry for 5 to 10 minutes until browning.
Stir in the mustard and thyme and fry for a few minutes.
Stir in the breadcrumbs and cook until golden in colour.
Ingredients:
Gammon
Teaspoon of mustard seeds
Teaspoon of black pepper
Bottle of mead (or 2)
Method:
Place the gammon in a pan with the mustard and pepper.
Cover with mead and bring to the boil and simmer for an hour and a half. Top up the liquid with More mead or water, if necessary, to keep the gammon fully covered.
Pour away the liquid (or use it as a base for making gravy) and let the gammon rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Similar to a posset these may have been drunk, rather than eaten. Though I have included some modern options for in the Kitchen as well.
Ingredients:
1 cup double cream
1 tablespoon honey
2 egg yolks
A sprig of rosemary, sprig of savoury & a few thyme flowers
OR
1 cup double cream
1 tablespoon honey
2 egg yolks
A head of elderflower and a tablespoon of meadowsweet
Method:
Mix the egg yolks into the cream. Gently heat the cream for a few minutes.
Stir in the honey, until dissolved.
Add the herbs or flowers and leave to steep for 30 minutes.
Strain through a sieve or cloth and pour into small bowls.
In a modern context these are great chilled for a couple of hours, or alternatively to make your very own ice cream, freeze for several hours, until set firm.
Ingredients:
300g rye flour
100g white bread flour
100g sourdough starter
1 tsp salt
300ml warm water (give or take)
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
Method:
Put the flour and salt into a large bowl and mix together.
Add the starter and slowly add the water and mix together to form quite a sticky dough that is more like a cake mix than a bread dough. You can add more or less water depending on how your dough feels. I find it varies slightly every time.
Add the seeds and mix well. There is no point kneading this bread.
Place the dough in a lightly greased loaf tin. Cover loosely with a damp cloth and leave for a few hours, ideally overnight. It won’t rise very much due to the low gluten content of the rye flour.
Heat your oven to its highest temperature.
Put your loaf in the centre of the oven for 10 minutes before dropping the temperature to 200 degrees Celsius if the crust is looking pale, 180 degrees Celsius if the crust is noticeably browning, and 170 degrees Celsius if it seems to be browning quickly. Cook for a further 40 mins.
Remove from the tin. The loaf should sound hollow when you tap it on the bottom.
Leave to cool fully before cutting.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
200g/1 cup flour
A pinch of salt
4 tablespoons of olive oil
150ml warm water
1 egg white
Butter
2 heads of elderflower (stalks removed)
Honey (to serve)
Method:
Mix together the flour and salt.
Stir in the oil and slowly add the water, whisking until it looks like think cream.
Whisk the egg white until light and bubbly, and fold into the batter, with the elderflower.
Heat some butter in a pan and, once hot, add the batter in large tablespoons, leaving space between each one. Once the underside is golden, flip and cook the other side.
Serve while still warm, drizzled with a little honey.
Ingredients:
½ a small onion (finely chopped)
2 eggs
Butter
A handful of fresh rosemary flowers
A small bunch of fresh garlic leaves (roughly chopped)
Salt & Pepper
Method:
Melt some butter in a frying pan and add the onion. Fry for 5-10 minutes until caramelising. Remove from the pan and leave to one side.
Whisk the eggs until they’re combined.
Melt some butter in a frying pan and add the eggs, making sure to spread them around the pan.
Cook the eggs until they start to set. Add the onions, rosemary flowers and garlic, evenly, to the top of the omelette
Fold gently in half and slide onto a plate to serve. Season well.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
Mussels
1/2 a pint of mead
250ml Cream
4 Spring onions (finely chopped)
Method:
Discard any open mussels that don’t close when you tap them.
Mix together the mead and the cream. Stir in the onions.
Bring this to a boil and add the Mussels. Cover and leave to cook for 2 minutes.
Remove the cover and shake or stir. When all the mussels have opened they are ready.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
This is a story of fire, and ice. I’ve embellished it a bit, but that’s my right.
Before the world is here, before grass, or sand, or cool waves, there is only fire, and ice, and the gap.
When the fire meets the ice in the middle of the gap, great rivers grow, roofed with frost, and deep in the folds of the frost, the giant Ymir sleeps. He is the first of his kind, and the best. The first cow comes to lick him free, and then he uses the sweat, and the hair, and the dead skin from his armpits, to create his own offspring, and they become the race of giants.
But the first cow keeps on licking. She licks at the frost until she finds somebody else, the god Buri, the first of his kind and the best. Buri makes his own offspring with his wife, and for a while the race of gods and the race of giants live in peace.
One of Buri’s grandsons, the one they call Odin, sees Ymir, and lifts his spear to aim it at the giant’s heart.
“This will be a good game,” he thinks, throwing it, piercing the giant through.
Odin’s brother Villi sees this game.
“This looks fun,” he thinks, and hooks a noose around the giant’s neck, choking out his last breath.
Odin’s brother Ve sees this game.
“This looks fun,” he thinks, as he hacks at the giant’s throat with his knife and lets him bleed.
But the giant does not stop bleeding. He bleeds and bleeds until everything, the fire, the ice, and the gap, are all filled, until the first gods and the first giants and the first cow are all drowning, drowning and sinking in the sticky red tide, save for those few who can hide in the hollow of an old tree. Odin, Villi, and Ve, work quickly, turning Ymir’s cold bones to rock, shaping his dead flesh into new land, trapping the briny flood so it becomes the ocean. They take his skull, and shake it; his brains become the clouds. The blue in his eyes becomes the blue of the sky, and the gods rule over this world and call it their own. The race of giants are pushed out to the edges of this place, out to the dark corners, where they become the wild things- avalanches, floods, forest fires and plagues- ancient and terrible.
Odin goes for a walk, admiring the grass, and the sand, and the cool waves, using some of the giant’s eyebrows to add a few finishing touches to hedges and trees, when he sees two pieces of driftwood on a beach.
‘This will be a good game,’ he thinks. He calls over his brother Lothar. “Lothar,” he says, “do these bits of wood look like people to you?”
Lothar looks down at them. “No. They look like bits of wood. But you always were rather strange.”
“Are you sure? Look again, will you?”
So Lothar, losing patience, picks up the pieces of driftwood and blows on them both. With his breath he gives them skin instead of bark, and the forms of a man and a woman. He tosses them back on the sand. “There,” he says, “now they look like people.”
Odin calls his brother Hoenir over. “Hoenir! Look what Lothar has done. I bet you couldn’t turn wood into people.”
Hoenir shrugs. “They’re not people, they just look like people. Any idiot with a chisel can make wood look like people.” He picks them up, and blows on them, and with his breath he gives them spirits – joy, laughter, and peace. He shrugs again, satisfied, and places them back on the sand.
Odin smirks. “That’s good,” he says, “but perhaps a little dull.” Before the others can stop him he picks up the pieces of driftwood and coughs, hacking, wheezing into their mouths, filling them with rage, madness, poetry, while the gods look on in horror.
Odin holds up a finger.
“Wait.”
He breathes on them again. With his breath he gives them breath of their own. With his breath he gives them speech. With his breath he gives them stories.
They become Ask and Embla, and they are the first of their kind, and the best.
The gods give Sunna the sun in a chariot to pull across the sky, so that the new race of men might know what time it is. The gods give Mani the moon in a chariot to pull across the sky, so that the new race of men might know what day it is.
But out in the edges of the world, in a dark corner called the Ironwood, where the bark on the trees is rust, and the soil on the ground is soot, a giantess sits brooding. She takes her two sons, and turns them into wolves, and they are the first of their kind and the best.
She raises up her son Hati, and says “Run. Run after the moon until you catch him, run until you swallow him, so that all the months of men shall be ended.”
She raises up her son Skoll and says “Run. Run after the sun until you catch her, run until you swallow her, so that all the days of men shall be ended.”
But it’s taking them a little longer to catch up than they expected; they are still there, the chasing wolves, running over the land shaped from Ymirs’ corpse, through the sky shaped from his skull, until they reach and devour their prey, until the world is gone and nothing is left but fire, and ice, and the gap.
Save, of course, for those that hide, in the hollow of an old tree…
Written by Emma Brooks
Ingredients:
250g salt
Goat, lamb or pork ribs
Water
Birch sticks (bark removed)
Method:
To preserve;
Place the ribs in a large container and work the salt into the meat, making sure every part is covered.
Leave to rest somewhere cold or in the fridge for 24 hours per Kg. Turning every 12 hours.
Brush the excess salt off and hang in a cool & dry location. Dry for 4-6 weeks.
To cook;
Separate the ribs lengthwise and place to soak in cold water overnight.
In a large pan or cauldron build a grid with the birch sticks by criss-crossing the sticks in the bottom.
Add water to the pan, to just about cover the sticks. Place the ribs on top of the grid and pop a lid on the pan. Leave the meat to steam for 2-3 hours on a low heat. Be sure to add water occasionally to make sure it does not go dry. When the meat falls off the bone, it is done.
If you choose you can put the meat on a grill for about 15-20 minutes to crisp prior to serving.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
600g Flour
300g salt
Water
1/2 a Leg of lamb
Rosemary or juniper berries
Method:
Mix together the flour and salt and slowly add water, bringing it together to form a stiff dough.
Roll out the dough thin enough that it will encase the leg of lamb.
Make slits in the lamb with a sharp knife and stuff a little rosemary or juniper berries into the flesh.
Wrap the leg in the salt dough and cook for 2 hours (rare) up to 3 hours (well done) over hot coals, turning occasionally. Depending on conditions, this may need extra cooking time.
Remove the now burnt and blackened salt dough before serving.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available on Amazon
Ingredients:
Water
A 2-3 cm thick plank of oak or other ‘food safe’ wood
1 whole trout (or any other fish)
Salt
Nails or wooden pegs
Optional Parsley, bay or other herbs
Method:
Soak the plank for 3 to 4 hours, or ideally overnight in water. You could substitute the water for beer or wine.
Prepare the fish by gutting, and removing the head, tail, and spine. Leaving the fish ina ‘butterfly’. Clean the fish and season the flesh with a little salt and any extra herbs. Fold in half, place onto the oak plank, nailing or pegging to hold it in place. If pegging you’ll need to drill some suitable holes into the plank.
Place the plank near to a fire and leave to slowly cook for about an hour, rotating the plank by 180 degrees half way through. Ensure the fish is cooked through before serving.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
200g sourdough starter
20g bread flour
1 tsp honey
1 tsp salt
butter
Method:
Mix the starter, flour, honey and salt in a large jug or bowl. Cover with a wet cloth or tea towel and leave to prove for about an hour.
Heat some butter on a low heat and, once hot, add the batter to the pan in large spoonfuls, using one spoonful per crumpet.
Cook for around 5 minutes, flip and fry for a further few minutes, until golden in colour and cooked through.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
Large handful of blanched, finely chopped nettle tops
350g bread flour (plus extra for dusting)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast
100 ml milk
50 ml water
Method:
Put the nettles, flour and salt into a large bowl and mix together. Add the yeast.
Mix together the water and milk.
Slowly add the milk solution to the bowl of dry ingredients and mix together to form a dough.
You can add more or less milk/water depending on how your dough feels. I find it varies slightly every time.
Tip out onto your worktop and knead for around 10 minutes.
Roll your dough into a ball, and dust with a little flour. Put it into a bowl and cover loosely with a damp cloth, to stop it drying out. Place somewhere warm.
Leave to prove for 1-2 hours, or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.
Tip your dough back out onto your work surface and carefully deflate it by poking it with your fingers. Divide the mix into 4 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and coat with a little more flour.
Place onto a baking tray, that has been dusted with flour, and leave for another hour or to prove again.
Heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Cook for about 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven, the rolls should sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom.
These can also be cooked in the dying embers of a fire.
Leave to cool fully before serving with butter.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
225g oats (1 1/2 cups)
60g wholemeal flour (1/4 cup)
1 teaspoon salt
60g unsalted butter 1/4 cup)
60ml just boiled water
Method:
In a large bowl mix together the oats, flour and salt.
Add the butter and rub it into the flour and oats with your finger tips, until it forms a breadcrumb like texture.
Add the water and mix together to form a stiff dough.
Roll out thinly to around 5mm thick and cut into rounds using a cup or pastry cutter.
Cook in a dry pan for around 5 minutes on each side, until lightly browned, or bake for approx 20 minutes at 170 degrees C
Leave to cool fully before eating
Ingredients:
Butter
A few mushrooms
A small bunch of wild garlic leaves or flowers, or modern cloves work too (finely chopped)
1/2 tsp rosemary (finely chopped)
1/2 tsp thyme (finely chopped)
Salt & pepper (to taste)
Method:
Melt a little butter in a pan.
Roughly chop the mushrooms and add them to the pan.
Fry for a couple of minutes, before adding the rest of the ingredients.
Fry once more for a couple of minutes before serving.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
Ingredients:
Butter
1 Onion (finely chopped)
500g diced Venison
500ml beef or venison stock
1 Leek (sliced)
2 parsnips (sliced)
2 sticks of Celery (sliced)
1 Turnip (diced)
Handful of roughly chopped Kale
Splash of Elderberry wine or red wine
2 Bay leaves
2 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme
1 sprig of Rosemary
1 stick of Cinnamon
Method:
Heat a little butter in a large pan or cauldron. Add the onion and fry for a few minutes, to soften.
Add the venison, stock, veg, wine & herbs, bring to a boil, and simmer for about 2 hours., topping up with more water if necessary.
Remove the bay, rosemary and cinnamon and serve immediately.
Taken from my book ‘Eat like a Viking!’ Available now on Amazon
