Christmas Dinner in Norway

Just in time for Christmas to be over, I thought I'd describe what we ate on Christmas Eve in Norway. We had lutefisk, kjøttkaker or meat balls, mashed peas, bacon, potatoes, lefse and salad. Lutefisk is available here in my part of Norway in the stores around Christmas time, but I've been told that not many people here eat it on Christmas eve or Christmas day. With my cousin Unni we had pinnekjøtt, which is a west coast dish of salted, steamed lamb and julepølser, or Christmas sausage. I went against the advice many of my brother's friends gave him before he came to visit me, and made lutefisk.

After defrosting two pieces in water, I put them on an oven pan and covered them with tinfoil.

We cooked it for about 30 minutes in all, on 180˚C or 356˚F.

For part of our International Student's Christmas dinner we had lutefisk with mashed peas and bacon, and I thought it was really good. So I made it again with my dad and brother:

Bacon makes anything good, right? Even lutefisk.

This I made from a package:

Mashed peas in 5 minutes. "Accessories to the most traditional Norwegian meal time. Delicious" Sorry for the bad translation but you get the idea.

Now this was good, even though it came from a can:

That's the kjøttkaker. In brown sauce.

With some salad and curried potatoes (hey, curry's not Norwegian!) we had ourselves a great feast.

Except for the lutefisk. I ate mine but couldn't even look at the leftover fish afterwards. I think I'd had a smaller piece at the other dinner or something...I put butter on it too! I don't think I'm alone among Norwegians in not liking it though. It is a strange invention. Who makes fish soaked in lye a traditional dish?

Merry Christmas!

Beef brisket with sauerkraut

I was at Cub looking for one of those boneless pork loin roasts. I was a little disappointed that the ones they had were not as good as the ones I am used to seeing there but they did have a nice looking beef brisket.

I was looking in Joy of Cooking for basic beef brisket preparation directions and came across a recipe for beef brisket with sauerkraut. It looked easy.

The recipe specified a large Dutch oven (that means French oven where I live) which I do not have. I do happen to have a very nice and quite large stainless steel pan with a tight fitting cover. I was pretty sure that my pan would, while not being true to the Joy of Cooking recipe, work just fine.I started off with the kraut. One of the first things that has to be done after starting the beef is to cover it with the drained kraut and two cups of boiling broth. I drained the kraut to measure how much juice was in there and then boiled about half of the kraut after adding a cup of broth to bring the amount of liquid up to two cups. I saved out half of the kraut because I prefer my kraut cool instead of hot, crisp instead of cooked. The saved kraut will be added back in to my portion after every thing else is cooked.

The recipe said 3 tablespoons of oil, to me that means a bunch, I used olive oil. The recipe also said that it is plenty OK to brown 1/4 cup of chopped onions. To me that means about that many, I hope I was close.Add the meat to the pan, cover with the kraut and broth, add an apple, cored and quartered. I went off recipe and went ahead and added the rest of the onion, quartered because I know how much TOPWLH likes her cooked onion.Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 3 to 3 1/2 hours.Easy.I see absolutely no reason why the same recipe wouldn't work just fine for that pork loin roast I was looking for in the first place.

Chicken & Rice Soup

Step One - make an Herbed Roast Chicken and have some guests over to eat most of it.

From there, here are the additional steps for some seriously delicious Chicken & Rice soup:

1) In a large soup pot, place the skin, carcass and bones (picked of any remaining meat) with a few cut up carrots, an onion cut into quarters, a few cloves of garlic, some parsley, salt & pepper. Celery is good if you have it, but we didn't at this point. Add cold water to the pot until it covers all of that by about an inch. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for about 4 hours:

2) After all of that has simmered for 4 hours, strain it through a fine mesh strainer to get rid of all the chunks, and then return it to the pot. You can throw out all the stuff you just strained out - the flavors have been extracted, so their work is done.

3) Cut up another 3 stalks of celery, 3 carrots, and dice half a white onion. Prepare some brown rice - we have a rice cooker, but stove-top rice works too:

4) Dump the carrots, onion, and celery into the pot with the strained stock. Bring it back to a boil and simmer until the veggies are almost as tender as you'd like them to be:

5) Add a few shakes of these spices too, while you're at it. The red pepper gives the soup a nice kick:

6) Chop up any remaining chicken meat into bit sized pieces and throw it and the rice in the pot and continue simmering until the chicken and rice are heated through:

7) Serve in a really nice soup bowl. So yummy, so winter appropriate. Plus, my house smells like heaven right now.

8) Make sure you have some crusty bread with it to mop up the dregs in your bowl. You'll really, really want to.

This makes a whole lot of soup, just FYI. We'll have leftovers for at least two more meals. I am really looking forward to it.