Gisli Matthias: “The luxury of eating is eating something you can't eat anywhere else"

Vestmannaeyjar, where chef Gisli Matthias runs his Slippurinn restaurant, is one of Iceland's fifteen islands. Its scenery, fauna and flora are its best assets. It is a volcanic area - the last eruption was five years ago - and the geothermal heat it gives off has been used since time immemorial to cook and heat homes. “You make holes in the ground, in the lava, and you can make things which don't require precise cooking, such as rye bread or lamb. I've found that the maximum temperature that can be reached is 125º”, says the chef. And he adds: "we only use this system occasionally, and the difference is not so much the taste as the process of using the heat".

The chef believes that the island's resources are more than sufficient to produce singular cuisine with its own identity. “For us, luxury doesn't mean eating truffles, ham or caviar, but something you can only eat at a specific location. That's why we cook with local produce, what we have in our garden, our orchard, or our surroundings, instead of following trends", explains the chef. To demonstrate this, he listed a few of the recipes on his restaurant's menu, and explained three of them, which he showcooked.

The main protagonist of the recipes was cod. “We use all of it. As my wife says, produce that's thrown out is a lack of imagination. And also a lack of respect, considering the number of people who starve to death", he added, to a round of applause. 

The first recipe used the fish's liver, presented as foie, on a kombu algae cracker. He then added red currants and fermented sea truffle. 

The second recipe was cod skin crackling, fried and added to sauce, skyr cheese and an algae marinade by way of a garum.

Finally, he produced a recipe of cod fin battered with yoghurt and a mixture of flours, along with a sauce made from the cod's leftovers. 

“Our diners appreciate the fact that we explain something different. We use techniques from other latitudes, such as in the foie or the crackling, but with local produce which, in some cases, is seen as food to be thrown away", was the chef's parting shot.