The Spiciest Norwegian Food Ever!

The widely accepted stereotype about Scandinavian food is that it is bland. Nordic-Americans themselves are probably to blame. What do we persist in serving our families at holidays and our communities at church potlucks? Foods that are white or shades of brown with spices no bolder than salt, pepper, or minced onion: mashed potatoes, lefse, creamed vegetables, meatballs, glorified rice, all sorts of white cookies, etc.

It may be a consequence of practicality ("Our forefathers used what was available to them in this cold and unforgiving land") and, by now, tradition ("But those are comfort foods; my grandma used to make them every Christmas!"); but it's a bum rap. The more that I prepare Scandinavian foods with my family each week, the more I discover a variety of interesting flavors that I didn't experience while growing up and eating the cooking of the Norwegians and Swedes of northwest ND. Yep, the palates of most of my relatives would never identify as "Scandinavian" what Suzanna and I served tonight for Scandinavian Saturday!

Suzanna lit the candles for ambiance.

These were the dishes that disproved the "bland" reputation, burning my family's tongues, slowing down their eating pace considerably, and increasing their milk consumption during the course of the meal.

Norwegian: Ost Suppe med Øl ["cheese soup with beer," our take on Wisconsin beer cheese soup]

We diced and sautéed onion, carrot, celery, parsnip, and garlic in oil and seasoned the vegetables with cayenne pepper, hot pepper sauce, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Then we added chicken stock and brought it a boil. We reduced it to a simmer and added beer. In another pot we melted butter and whisked in an equal amount of flour to brown. Then we whisked in whole milk and half-and-half and heated it until thickened. Then we added tons of grated cheese: Gruyère, sharp cheddar, and (for that Scandinavian touch) Jarlsberg [a mild Norwegian cheese similar to Swiss] and gjetost ["goat cheese," a brown and fudgy Norwegian cheese with a distinctive flavor]. We whisked the cheese mixture into the soup and added Dijon mustard, dry mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and more hot pepper sauce. We topped each individual serving with a handful of cheddar kettle corn. It was very good (and a good way to use up a block of leftover gjetost), but the girls noticed the cayenne and pepper sauce more than I did.

Norwegian: Brennende Kjærlighet ["burning love," which was so spicy that I understand now why it's called that!]

When we had brennende kjærlighet at Norwegian camp this past summer, it was not spicy at all. The cooks had made mashed potatoes in one pot and boiled ring sausage in another, then removed and cut up the sausage, and finally stirred the chunks of meat into the mashed potatoes to serve as one dish. An alternative way to serve brennende kjærlighet is not to stir the meat into the potatoes but to use the mashed potatoes as a base upon which to serve a spicy sausage mix, which is how Suzanna and I did it. Quite a difference from what we ate this summer!

Suzanna made standard mashed potatoes, cleaning and peeling and cutting the potatoes (which I then boiled and drained) and then using a hand mixer to whip them with cream, butter, salt, and pepper. I fried scallions and button mushrooms in butter and added chili powder, coriander, cumin, hot pepper sauce, lemon juice, chili pepper paste, and Fargo Shake (a "sweet and spicy" spice blend created for the eponymous ND city by Wayzata Bay Spice Company). After the mushrooms had released their moisture, I sprinkled in some potato starch to tighten the sauce and then added grated carrot and chopped smokey ring sausage.

The spice mix worked with the sausage to add the "burning" to "burning love," and our tongues were grateful for the bland potato base to counter the spiciness. My own mother's version of brennende kjærlighet (although she never called it that) would have been mashed potatoes with creamed corn used as a gravy over it and boiled ring sausage served on the side. And her spices? Salt and pepper added to the creamed corn at the table. So bold!

Norwegian: Stekte Epler med Kremfløte ["fried apples with whipped cream"]

Suzanna was the queen of prep work for tonight's meal, grating all the cheese that went into the soup, washing and chopping all the mushrooms, slicing the sausage, peeling and cutting the potatoes, and coring and chopping all the apples for dessert. At the grocery store we selected six different types of apples for a variety of skin colors from pink to red and pale green to lime. This afternoon Suzanna washed and chopped them and tossed them in the juice from a lemon and put them in the fridge. At the same time, I whipped some heavy cream, white sugar, and vanilla extract into a thick, glossy, decadent topping for our dessert. That, too, spent a few hours in the fridge.

After supper (while Susan and I waited for the girls to finish their spicy food), I fried the chopped apples in butter, adding brown sugar, cinnamon, and cardamom. Before taking the apples off the heat, I added a few shots of brandy. Each person then spooned the colorful apple mixture in its warm caramel sauce into his/her bowl and topped it off with a generous dollop of whipped cream. It was really delicious and, although spicy from the cinnamon and cardamom, certainly a cool-down for our tongues after the soup and sausage dishes.

I'm not generally so good at making just enough of something to last only one meal; there are always leftovers. So I'm not sure how we managed to have only one serving's worth of leftovers of the brennende kjærlighet after supper. We do, however, have a full gallon of ost suppe remaining if any of you, Faithful Readers, would like to swing by and sample it. (Maybe it should be called brennende ost suppe ["flaming cheese soup"] instead!)

Tragedies

It has been a rough week around here. Sunday night three university students used a cell phone to call a friend, reporting that they needed help and were near water; but the message wasn't clear, and the call was cut short. Thus began a worried search for those students--involving police, community members, their softball teammates, and other groups of university students--that ended Tuesday with the discovery of their bodies inside a vehicle submerged in a rural stock pond northwest of the city.

When I heard that terrible news, I was with a group of 30 university students in New Town for a field experience in the public schools there; we drove up at 5:30 A.M. Tuesday and were to stay overnight, spend Wednesday in the schools, and return Wednesday afternoon. Well, three of the victims' softball teammates were with my group, as were a few more baseball teammates (the men's and women's teams practice and travel together so much that they're as close as one big team), and they were completely distraught. The rest of the group was stunned, too--so we checked back out of the hotel, reboarded the bus, and came back to campus Tuesday night.

University classes were canceled Tuesday night and all day Wednesday, which was designated a day of mourning and remembrance. They were canceled again Thursday afternoon so that all faculty and students could attend a memorial service for the three ladies at 2:00 P.M. We heard from a local pastor, the university president (who was clearly emotionally shaken), the student body president, the three ladies' softball coach and team co-captain, and all of their parents, who were remarkably composed and said such beautiful things about the compassion of our community, the capability of our police and university officials, and the character of our students.

I had never met the three ladies, but I couldn't help crying throughout the service with sympathy for their family and friends, so many of them my own students whom I watched clinging to one another for support, not sure how to react or to process their own emotions--and several of whom I had hugged and listened to and sat with first in a hotel room and then on a bus late Tuesday night.

You can trace the related events from Sunday through today here. You could also search the Internet for news about Ashley Neufeld, Kyrstin Gemar, and Afton Williamson. The story captured national interest and was featured on television news (including Today and Good Morning America) and in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada (the three ladies were from CA, CO, and MB).

As if that weren't enough, yesterday Susan's grandpa Elmer Gustafson passed away. After 98 birthdays and 70 years of marriage to Susan's grandma Laura (remember Elmer and Laura?), "Grandpa Gus" ended his life's journey in the nursing home where he and Laura have been living recently. Susan's dad Roger (who was here for supper tonight) has started making funeral arrangements, and his siblings will be coming to town in the next few days to join him. The funeral will be Monday at 2:00 P.M. at our church, and Susan and I will sing one song, and our three daughters will sing another song. (Elmer always brightened up whenever our girls showed up to visit, so it'll be a sweet moment to have them sing for him one last time.)

Elmer was nearly 80 years older than the three students from our university who died this week, so their deaths were definitely more shocking. However, it's no less sad to say goodbye to a loved one who is elderly. Please keep Susan's family in your prayers as well as the families of Ashley, Kyrstin, and Afton.

The Quick Meal That Wasn't

Halloween isn't so much a Scandinavian thing, so I had been racking my brain trying to think of an appropriate Nordic menu for last night's Scandinavian Saturday supper and hadn't come up with anything. Because I was in charge of chaperoning the girls for their afternoon and evening of trick-or-treating (remember?), Susan asked if I'd rather have a Scandinavian Sunday this week, and that was just fine with me.

However, because of a full day of Halloween events, I got very little done yesterday that I needed to for work and was hoping to catch up a bit today. So I selected a menu that I thought would be relatively quick . . . but I was wrong. Every Scandinavian meal seems to take me a long time, I guess because it's always something that I've never made before, so I have to follow the recipes carefully and make just one thing at a time in order to maintain my concentration and not burn whatever dish I'm working on at the moment! Moral of the story: still didn't get any work done today, but it was another fine meal.

I had Hillary, my helper this week, arrange some gourds to serve as table decoration.

We got to use a soup tureen tonight! Fancy.

We filled the tureen with blomkål suppe ["cauliflower soup"]. We sautéed onion, garlic, and curry powder in butter, then added carrots and celery, and finally added cauliflower (three kinds: white, orange, and purple!) and fresh parsley. We added turkey stock and chicken stock and set it to boil. In a separate pan, we melted butter and whisked in flour and whole milk. We took that off the heat and added half-and-half. Then we added that to the stock and vegetables, adding dill and other seasonings to the soup. It simmered for a long time and was burn-your-tongue hot when we ladled it from the tureen into our soup bowls, stirring in sour cream at the last minute for extra creaminess.

Hillary made salat med agurk ["lettuce salad with cucumbers"] all by herself! She tossed some mixed salad greens and chopped cucumber in a cucumber-ranch dressing. She put individual portions at everybody's place setting and added sea-salt-and-pepper croutons to each plate. Refreshing!

We baked reke, krabbe, og kamskjell med dill og hvitløk ["shrimp, crab, and scallops with dill and garlic"]. It was essentially an Italian shrimp scampi recipe with extra seafood and with dill for a Norwegian touch! We marinated the seafood in olive oil, white wine, kosher salt, and black pepper. Into some softened butter, we mashed garlic, shallots, fresh parsley, rosemary, red pepper flakes, the zest and juice from a fresh lemon, panko, kosher salt, and black pepper. That served as the topping for the seafood, which we baked until the crust was brown and the butter was bubbling. It was sinfully delicious!

For dessert we served fersken blåbær smuldre ["peach blueberry crumble"] with vanilla ice cream. We mixed peaches and blueberries with the zest and juice from a fresh lemon, sugar, flour, and cardamom and poured that mixture into individual ramekins. With a mixer we combined flour, white sugar, brown sugar, kosher salt, cinnamon, and diced cold butter to make the crumble with which we topped each ramekin. It looks terrific, doesn't it? However, I added too much cardamom; the peaches weren't cooked through; and I wasn't thrilled with the gooey-ness that the flour created in the juice from the fruits. Live and learn.