Sunday - after the orgy
A food diary by Ari Níelsson, entry 3.
Woke up to the rare pale sun. It reaches through the east-facing windows of my bedroom more easily between autumn and spring, when the grand oak in the courtyard shakes free of its leaves and deposits them onto my balcony. In late afternoon it re-emerges through my kitchen window to the west. Except, more and more often lately it fails to make its appointment. The plants don’t know what to think. Last night’s thick rain – never snow – vanished before it touched the ground, and the ground on the way to the bakery glistens indifferent.
Some leftovers are more easily dispatched than others, usually the ones there are less of. The cheese slivers will keep, and so will the hjónabandæla, which is just as well. There are only so many cups of coffee in a day. Discovered the joys of the Butterring, a soft coil erring on the breadier end of the brioche spectrum, studded with the aromatic pop of the occasional nigella seed and, most importantly, fresh out of the oven. Some things are worth getting up early for on a Sunday. Torn and eaten with hummus, ajvar, bits of sharp cheddar and kaltbach, and leftover pickles.
Most of the day passes in silence. A necessary counter broken up with the clink of rounds of washing up and bottles for the recycling, the rustle of binbags filled with orange peel and sapped cinnamon sticks. The frost-loving kale has finally died a death in the vegetable drawer; able to handle the harsher aspects of winter head on, we both wilt in face of a soggy perpetual autumn. Find a packet of salmon tortellini I bought with the idea it might be nice to eat something other than what I’d eaten the day before. For some reason they’re black, but the colour bleeds into slate in the water. Briefly, I entertain the notion of making a sauce with an unopened bottle of sparkling wine before the thought of then having to finish it gives me a headache. Shallots in the pan instead, with butter, deglazed with cognac and finished with Dijon, sour cream, and coriander. It all sounds promising on paper, but there’s no caramelisation, or flavour. Stir in some leftover trout roe and gochujang and it ends up tasting mostly of the latter. Hide it under the tortellini, which also looks unappealing. Hide that under more coriander, roe, and smoked salmon scraps. It’s fine. The pearls of trout pop pleasantly like saline pomegranate seeds, but the rest could easily have been replaced with a cracker. All the coffee cups are gleaming serried in the cupboard again, waiting to offer their support in a new dawn of uncertain brightness.
Thanks to Ari for his contributions to the gazette — you’ll find a text by him in our upcoming print edition of Fortified, too.