Yes, Lutefisk was involved in St. Patrick's Day.
Love, Lena
THE ADVENTURES OF OLE & LENA A Stud & and Hot Dish
Showing posts with label lutefisk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lutefisk. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Have you got your lutefisk ready for Christmas?
Well, Folks, you know it's THAT time of year again. The time when you have to resurrect your World War I gas mask when you go by the fish counter in the grocery store, or hold your breath as you drive very swiftly by the local churches that are holding their annual lutefisk suppers. All the GOOD ScandihOOvians are rubbing their tummies and salivating to the point of needing bibs in anticipation of this wonderful delicacy being served during the coming holidays. Me? I'm definitely NOT a good Scandihoovian. I can't stand the stuff. And Ole, being a Finn, doesn't hold with that kind of nonsense either.
Lutefisk starts out by hanging on racks in the dry, cool air of the ScandihOOvian countries. We lived in Iceland for several years, and fishing being the mainstay of their economy, we saw lots of the beginning stages of lutefisk.
After the fish have hung on the racks for about a year - I'm NOT Kidding - a full year, it's so dry that it tinkles in the wind and sounds like wind chimes. That's about the ONLY nice thing about lutefisk. Then it's shipped off to other countries where the good ole' Swedes and Norwegians have emigrated, snapped up by these folks and brought home with great anticipation.
In order to reconstitute the fish it has to be soaked in lye water for an extended period of time, then it's rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. How many times have you ever been eating fish and you say, "You know what this fish needs? Lye!" Me neither.
Do you remember the green slime that used to come in an egg-shaped container? Crack open that container and let the slime run and that gives you a pretty good sense of the overall feel of lutefisk. It's one of the few COOKED fish dishes that could be described as slippery.
Every Christmas my Mother dutifully shopped and shopped for the best lutefisk she could find, and on Christmas Eve would boil it, which would spread the "aroma" throughout the house. My brother and I would run to the farthest point away from the kitchen and cover our heads with layers of blankets trying to avoid the "scent." My sister, on the other hand, along with my parents practically inhaled the stuff.
Swedish food generally isn't known for being real edible, and lutefisk is awful even by those low standards. The pickled herring isn't bad, in fact I kind of like that on occasion. But among other things there's Glog, which is a purple that doesn't occur in nature, requires an open flame and tastes suspiciously like Nyquil. I truly suspect that lutefisk is what drove the Vikings to look for Canada.
Me? I think I'll stick to meatballs for Christmas. How about you?
Love Lena
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
How (but not why) Lutefisk Became a Delicacy!
Since it's getting close to Christmas and I haven't done my annual lutefisk rant yet, you people are in for it today. So grab a cup of coffee, make yourself comfortable and let me get this off my chest.
I am a half breed - half Norwegian and half Swedish. Just think of the conflict that must go on inside my head. Some things about being ScandiHOOvian I will never understand, and that is their love of lutefisk. It literally means "cod soaked in plutonium" - and dates back to the Viking era.
Writings from back then say that the Vikings came ashore from their long boats and shuffled along over the ground with their hands in their pockets. Their funny appearance (they were huge people and wore pants that made them look like musk ox) frightened the local villagers. So one day the village women decided to make them a special meal.
First they gathered cod in the traditional ScandiHOOvian way. They wrapped their arms around the middle sections of seals and squeezed real hard making the cod pop back out. (This later became known as the Heimlich maneuver. Today it's used to save the lives of folks who have a whole codfish lodged in their throats.) After gathering the cod - despite what I may have implied earlier - they did NOT soak the fish in plutonium. No, the village women really wanted the Vikings to suffer. So they soaked the cod in lye. I'm not kidding. The same lye, as you know, that is an industrial strength chemical and is used to clean your drains.
Remember, I told you that the day of the storm the Sons of Norway had to cancel their annual lutefisk supper. Well, they held it last night. And Ole and I, being the good ScandiHOOvians that we are - well, he's a Finlander, but he came along just in case he had to do that Heimlich maneuver on me - we attended this annual lutefisk supper with some friends that are members of the Sons of Norway. I love the Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy. But the main course, not surprisingly, was the same delicacy served to those Vikings way back when.
Anyway, the Vikings ate ravenously of this marvelous new food, despite having to chew so hard and long on the rubbery fish that in many cases, horns actually grew out of their heads. History books tell us that within a few years the Viking era ended. Most historians think the invention of more powerful weapons doomed the proud, sea-faring warriors. But some historians cling to another theory: It's pretty hard to wander the globe plundering and pillaging when you cannot wander more than 50 feet from the toilet.
In the centuries since, lutefisk has not only remained a crowd-pleaser among the ScandiHOOvian folks, it's also become very important in training sled dogs. We have a musher that lives about a half mile from us and frequently in the winter we'll see him running his dogs down the river yelling at them "Vichvin yew moots vants da lutefisk?" or "Which one of you mutts wants da lutefisk?" Then of course, they run faster because none of them want it!!
But back to the dinner.
The Sons of Norway shouldn't be confused with a similar sounding group - the Sons of Silence. The Sons of Silence don't hold a lutefisk dinner every year. And the Sons of Norway don't wear helmets, goggles and leather clothing - unless they're preparing lutefisk . . .
The dinner was to start at 5 o'clock, but being good ScandiHOOvians we, of course, arrived at 4:30. ScandiHOOvians are always early, you know. At 5 o'clock the eating began. Throughout the dinner an accordion player entertained the crowd with all the traditional lutefisk eating songs.
Approximately 1.43 seconds after receiving my plate of food that contained a chunk of lutefisk that was the same size as my head, along with a plastic fork, one of the members putting the dinner on came up and asked me if everything was okay. The plastic fork, it turns out, couldn't cut the lutefisk, which is also used as roofing material in Denmark, I'm told. Because I couldn't think of the Norwegian word for "chainsaw" I stuffed the entire slab of lutefisk into my mouth and swallowed.
That quickly ended my conversation with the questioner. I excused myself and headed for "the facilities." Seems someone else had a bit too much lutefisk also. I could tell because she was screaming "Oh, Good Lard! Ven vill yew be dun in dare?" and kept slamming her head against the door so hard that it was making the seat vibrate!!
To quote Forrest Gump - "That's all I have to say about that!"
I am a half breed - half Norwegian and half Swedish. Just think of the conflict that must go on inside my head. Some things about being ScandiHOOvian I will never understand, and that is their love of lutefisk. It literally means "cod soaked in plutonium" - and dates back to the Viking era.
Writings from back then say that the Vikings came ashore from their long boats and shuffled along over the ground with their hands in their pockets. Their funny appearance (they were huge people and wore pants that made them look like musk ox) frightened the local villagers. So one day the village women decided to make them a special meal.
First they gathered cod in the traditional ScandiHOOvian way. They wrapped their arms around the middle sections of seals and squeezed real hard making the cod pop back out. (This later became known as the Heimlich maneuver. Today it's used to save the lives of folks who have a whole codfish lodged in their throats.) After gathering the cod - despite what I may have implied earlier - they did NOT soak the fish in plutonium. No, the village women really wanted the Vikings to suffer. So they soaked the cod in lye. I'm not kidding. The same lye, as you know, that is an industrial strength chemical and is used to clean your drains.
Remember, I told you that the day of the storm the Sons of Norway had to cancel their annual lutefisk supper. Well, they held it last night. And Ole and I, being the good ScandiHOOvians that we are - well, he's a Finlander, but he came along just in case he had to do that Heimlich maneuver on me - we attended this annual lutefisk supper with some friends that are members of the Sons of Norway. I love the Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and gravy. But the main course, not surprisingly, was the same delicacy served to those Vikings way back when.
Anyway, the Vikings ate ravenously of this marvelous new food, despite having to chew so hard and long on the rubbery fish that in many cases, horns actually grew out of their heads. History books tell us that within a few years the Viking era ended. Most historians think the invention of more powerful weapons doomed the proud, sea-faring warriors. But some historians cling to another theory: It's pretty hard to wander the globe plundering and pillaging when you cannot wander more than 50 feet from the toilet.
In the centuries since, lutefisk has not only remained a crowd-pleaser among the ScandiHOOvian folks, it's also become very important in training sled dogs. We have a musher that lives about a half mile from us and frequently in the winter we'll see him running his dogs down the river yelling at them "Vichvin yew moots vants da lutefisk?" or "Which one of you mutts wants da lutefisk?" Then of course, they run faster because none of them want it!!
But back to the dinner.
The Sons of Norway shouldn't be confused with a similar sounding group - the Sons of Silence. The Sons of Silence don't hold a lutefisk dinner every year. And the Sons of Norway don't wear helmets, goggles and leather clothing - unless they're preparing lutefisk . . .
The dinner was to start at 5 o'clock, but being good ScandiHOOvians we, of course, arrived at 4:30. ScandiHOOvians are always early, you know. At 5 o'clock the eating began. Throughout the dinner an accordion player entertained the crowd with all the traditional lutefisk eating songs.
Approximately 1.43 seconds after receiving my plate of food that contained a chunk of lutefisk that was the same size as my head, along with a plastic fork, one of the members putting the dinner on came up and asked me if everything was okay. The plastic fork, it turns out, couldn't cut the lutefisk, which is also used as roofing material in Denmark, I'm told. Because I couldn't think of the Norwegian word for "chainsaw" I stuffed the entire slab of lutefisk into my mouth and swallowed.
That quickly ended my conversation with the questioner. I excused myself and headed for "the facilities." Seems someone else had a bit too much lutefisk also. I could tell because she was screaming "Oh, Good Lard! Ven vill yew be dun in dare?" and kept slamming her head against the door so hard that it was making the seat vibrate!!
To quote Forrest Gump - "That's all I have to say about that!"
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
How to make Lutefisk
With the Holidays coming up I think it's time to educate all you non-ScandiHOOvians on traditional holiday food in a ScandiHOOvian household. It dawned on me the other day that some of you may not even know what Lutefisk is. Well, guess what? I'm here to educate you today - you lucky son-of-a-guns!
Now lutefisk is not easy to love, or even like - take my word for it. What's more, it's certainly not easy to explain. It's actually cod fish caught in the cold water of the North Atlantic that is hung over wooden racks to dry until it tinkles in the breezes like a crystal wind chime. It can be kept indefinitely in this manner, and sometimes is. When one gets the urge to eat lutefisk, it's soaked in water for a number of days, then in a lye solution - yes - I said LYE - and then in water again. If you're a commercial dealer you then package it and sell it to "customers" who bring it home and either boil it or bake it, loaded with butter.
Why a soak in lye solution, you ask? The lye breaks down the dried cell walls and allows them to absorb water, which turns this fish into a gel-like mass that wiggles like white jello. MOST ScandiHOOvians go crazy over this, but not this one.
When I was a kid lutefisk was a Christmas tradition. And at that time you bought your lutefisk still in the dried form. Nowadays, the commercial processors do all that rehydrating for you. You can buy a white mass of gelatinous lutefisk already wrapped in cellophane on a styrofoam tray, ready to bring home to cook and smell up your house. My mother would start looking for "good" lutefisk weeks prior to Christmas so that she could spend two weeks soaking and washing and soaking and washing so it would be ready to prepare on Christmas Eve. My Mom, Dad and older sister drooled over this stuff as it was being prepared, anticipating putting the wiggly, smelly stuff in their mouth and savoring it. My brother and I would run to the farthest point in the house and hide our heads under blankets trying to keep the noxious smell from invading our nostrils. Then we would have to actually sit at the table and watch this jelly-like substance be consumed while we tried not to gag. The rule at our house was that you "had to at least try it." And year after year we would choke down the tiniest morsel and try not to throw it back up.
Your can probably guess that as an adult, no lutefisk has EVER crossed the threshold of MY house!!
When Ole and I lived in Iceland we discovered that fishing for cod was the main industry. You could drive for miles and see fish racks hanging full of drying cod tinkling in the breezes. One of Ole's goals while we lived there was to go out on one of the fishing boats, and we were fortunate enough to have a landlord whose brother was a fishing boat owner.
So one weekend Ole and a buddy were invited to go on a fishing trip in the North Atlantic. Now mind you, this is not at all like going fishing on one of the Minnesota lakes. They went out on a 32-ton round-bottomed fishing boat where on a good day the waves are only 6 feet high. The North Atlantic is not exactly what you call hospitable. And with a round bottom, it only enhances the rolling effect. Ole said he spent a lot of time in the bunk eating crackers. The buddy that went along had spent a lot of time on smaller Navy ships so had a pretty good set of sea legs.
Now, these fishermen work hard when they go to sea - and it was quite evident that when they are not at sea they party pretty hard too. The fishing boat was scheduled to leave port at midnight, and apparently the Captain had been enjoying himself prior to this. Ole said the captain had been imbibing to the point where he couldn't drive a car, so he rode up to the dock on a horse, jumped off, took over the helm (is that the right word - the steering wheel whatever that is in nautical terms), stuck his head out the window, and without looking at any radar or maps, drove that boat for 12 hours straight out to his fishing nets. Guess his head should have been clear by that time, huh?
And then the work began. Ole was told when they returned to port that the Albert (the boat he was on) had the biggest catch ever - so apparently the Albert's guests brought them luck.
Here - take a ride on the round-bottomed fishing boat with Ole. I'll make sure he brings enough soda crackers and a barf bucket for you! Oh, yah, make sure you turn off the music up on my little jukebox thingie because this little video has a very special song that goes with it. Listen close, okay?
It took Ole two days before he got his land legs back again - it was funny to watch him walking like he was still on the rolling deck of the Albert.
Ta-Da . . . Hope you have a great day
Lena
Now lutefisk is not easy to love, or even like - take my word for it. What's more, it's certainly not easy to explain. It's actually cod fish caught in the cold water of the North Atlantic that is hung over wooden racks to dry until it tinkles in the breezes like a crystal wind chime. It can be kept indefinitely in this manner, and sometimes is. When one gets the urge to eat lutefisk, it's soaked in water for a number of days, then in a lye solution - yes - I said LYE - and then in water again. If you're a commercial dealer you then package it and sell it to "customers" who bring it home and either boil it or bake it, loaded with butter.
Why a soak in lye solution, you ask? The lye breaks down the dried cell walls and allows them to absorb water, which turns this fish into a gel-like mass that wiggles like white jello. MOST ScandiHOOvians go crazy over this, but not this one.
When I was a kid lutefisk was a Christmas tradition. And at that time you bought your lutefisk still in the dried form. Nowadays, the commercial processors do all that rehydrating for you. You can buy a white mass of gelatinous lutefisk already wrapped in cellophane on a styrofoam tray, ready to bring home to cook and smell up your house. My mother would start looking for "good" lutefisk weeks prior to Christmas so that she could spend two weeks soaking and washing and soaking and washing so it would be ready to prepare on Christmas Eve. My Mom, Dad and older sister drooled over this stuff as it was being prepared, anticipating putting the wiggly, smelly stuff in their mouth and savoring it. My brother and I would run to the farthest point in the house and hide our heads under blankets trying to keep the noxious smell from invading our nostrils. Then we would have to actually sit at the table and watch this jelly-like substance be consumed while we tried not to gag. The rule at our house was that you "had to at least try it." And year after year we would choke down the tiniest morsel and try not to throw it back up.
Your can probably guess that as an adult, no lutefisk has EVER crossed the threshold of MY house!!
When Ole and I lived in Iceland we discovered that fishing for cod was the main industry. You could drive for miles and see fish racks hanging full of drying cod tinkling in the breezes. One of Ole's goals while we lived there was to go out on one of the fishing boats, and we were fortunate enough to have a landlord whose brother was a fishing boat owner.
So one weekend Ole and a buddy were invited to go on a fishing trip in the North Atlantic. Now mind you, this is not at all like going fishing on one of the Minnesota lakes. They went out on a 32-ton round-bottomed fishing boat where on a good day the waves are only 6 feet high. The North Atlantic is not exactly what you call hospitable. And with a round bottom, it only enhances the rolling effect. Ole said he spent a lot of time in the bunk eating crackers. The buddy that went along had spent a lot of time on smaller Navy ships so had a pretty good set of sea legs.
Now, these fishermen work hard when they go to sea - and it was quite evident that when they are not at sea they party pretty hard too. The fishing boat was scheduled to leave port at midnight, and apparently the Captain had been enjoying himself prior to this. Ole said the captain had been imbibing to the point where he couldn't drive a car, so he rode up to the dock on a horse, jumped off, took over the helm (is that the right word - the steering wheel whatever that is in nautical terms), stuck his head out the window, and without looking at any radar or maps, drove that boat for 12 hours straight out to his fishing nets. Guess his head should have been clear by that time, huh?
And then the work began. Ole was told when they returned to port that the Albert (the boat he was on) had the biggest catch ever - so apparently the Albert's guests brought them luck.
Here - take a ride on the round-bottomed fishing boat with Ole. I'll make sure he brings enough soda crackers and a barf bucket for you! Oh, yah, make sure you turn off the music up on my little jukebox thingie because this little video has a very special song that goes with it. Listen close, okay?
It took Ole two days before he got his land legs back again - it was funny to watch him walking like he was still on the rolling deck of the Albert.
Ta-Da . . . Hope you have a great day
Lena
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