dijon

What are we making today?

A. Icelandic Pönnukökur

Bless you.

R. They're basically crepes from Iceland, but thinner than crepes. They’re just like crepes but 1000 times more stressful.

Being thin, is that what makes them Icelandic?

A. Yeah, and the pan we use. The recipe is from my grandmother, I grew up eating them every weekend. The Pönnukökur pan is a super thick bottomed cast iron pan with no lip, so you can pour off every last drop of extra batter to make the thinnest pancake possible. It only makes pancakes. Our friend Julien used ours to try to warm up tortillas one night and it totally fucked it up!

What determines a food being Icelandic?

R. A lack of ingredients probably.

A. Yeah, no spices, super bland, no vegetables, nothing green at all.

R. Nothing that can grow in the ground, it has to be made from things that are preserved.

A. With salt. 

So you don't get scurvy?

A. Oh that's actually a problem in Ireland. All the older people there just have such bad diets, no vegetables, citrus or fruits. Apparently there’s a scurvy case like once a week.

R. And Iceland is worse than Ireland so there's probably more there.

What kind of food did you both grow up eating?

A. In one word – bland. Literally all white foods. Rice, white bread, plain Skyr, cheerios, white milk, potatoes. Usually rice pudding for dinner with cinnamon sugar, which was the only spice I knew about until the age of 19. My favourite meal to this day is boiled cod fish and potatoes mashed into baby food consistency with more butter than anyone should consume in one sitting. 

R. My mom is half British half Icelandic and my dad is Portuguese so it was definitely a mix. In general we would have a typical British Sunday dinner once a week, a roast or something. When I was in high school my dad got really into cooking and started making a lot of traditional Portuguese dishes. Andï and I have some disagreements about codfish, which is a very common dish in both Iceland and Portugal. The Icelanders eat it from fresh or frozen while the Portuguese rehydrate salted cod and cook it a ton of different ways. Supposedly there is a different Portuguese cod dish for each day of the year. My favourite is just grilled with olive oil and garlic but there are some great cod stews as well. Definitely better than Icelandic baby mush...

Who is your dream collaborator?

R. Ru Paul. For lifestyle. 

A. Me too. He's so smart. I watched a video recently where he had to guess who was wearing the wig, it was just so impressive.

R. It would be super fun to design Ru Paul's house, a lot of closets, a lot of wig closets. A soft, padded floor for death drops. 

What’s the worst script you’ve ever read?

A. The worst and best script I have ever read is Cult of Chucky - the seventh something Chucky movie from a couple years ago. Its like a drinking game with chuckles. Every time Chucky asks “you wanna play?” or someone says "he's right behind you" I would laugh out loud by myself.

What makes you guys a good team, cooking or otherwise?

R. We're actually really bad at cooking together. 

A. It's always a disaster. We cook at different paces.

R. I like cooking slow and taking my time, and enjoying things and Andï is all about speed and efficiency. Whenever we are hosting dinners for people it turns an extremely enjoyable experience into an extremely stressful one. It usually ends up coming out good, but we're sweating. We're a good team at lots of things but cooking, we just have opposite styles.

What's a perfect day together?

R. Last perfect day we had we went and bought perogies at Karen's Perogies, and then we went to the McPhillips Station Casino that neither of us had been to before. We put one bet on roulette and lost everything, haha. Then we went to the McDonald’s in the casino. Andï found this weird library in the casino.

A. I tried to steal books but then I realized they were all cut in half and glued to the wall. You forgot about Karen's when she gave us piles of religious stuff to read with our perogies.

R. Yeah, lots of pro-god material. 

A. We must have had the stench of going to the casino on us. Then we went to Thirsty's Flea Market, it's way better than Mulvey. I bought a self portrait from George Chartrand. 

Andï can you tell us about your experience with The Keg?

A. I just hate it so much. 

R. We had a hundred dollar gift certificate to the Keg so I said we should go there for fun. It's a place we'd never go normally, so thought it would be chill and she wouldn’t have to stress because it's free. Andï got so stressed out.

A. Well the server kept questioning everything I ordered, she was really mean. I cried, I've cried so many times at the Keg, like at least five. 

What’s your most memorable Valentine’s Day?

A. My best Valentine’s Day ever was last year, I was alone in the jungle and a Mayan man came up to me and asked if I wanted a spiritual tour through the jungle and I said yes with no self-preservation. He kept wanting to stop and feel the energy of the jungle. He had me eat a lot of different things that I didn't recognize, one of which was termites off off a blade of grass, which were some of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. They pop in your mouth like fish eggs, and it was a burst of mint. I'd never eaten anything living before. I was a little worried they'd crawl down my throat but you can bite them pretty quickly. They're the size of large ants. And then he brought me to a waterfall, and we sat together on a rock and we had a very special moment which he ended with, "I would like to marry a European woman." Suffice to say, my most romantic Valentine’s Day ever. 

R. During that day I was just sitting here alone. 

A. He was a really tiny man, I thought he was a child but he was 24. He was a little disappointed hearing that I was 27, he was like, "and you don't have any children?"

What's your favourite mustard?

R. Babci Polish hot mustard. It's really good, it's a horseradish mustard and it's spicy.

A. Same. Or, Sinn­epsósa, it's really good. It's kind of sweet, super dark brown.

R. It looks really gross but it's so good.