Norwegian Meatballs (kjottkaker)

Back to school for the kids this week.  It's time for some Norwegian soul food, so I made Norwegian Meatballs. The recipe given here tells you how to make gravy, which you must have, however I learned a secret from my mother-in-law--freeze your leftover gravy from a pot roast, then deglase the pan  after browning the meatballs and add the frozen gravy to the pan, return the meatballs and cook for 30 minutes or so.

Norwegian Meatballs (Kjottkakker)

1 T butter

1 medium onion, minced

1 & 1/2 lb ground beef

3 slices white bread

1/3 c milk

1 egg

1/4 t nutmeg

1/4 t allspice

1 t salt

1/4 t pepper

Melt butter in a frying pan. Cook onions in butter until clear.  Soak bread in milk.  Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Form meat into balls about the size of a golf ball.  Melt about 1 T. butter in pan, brown meatballs on all sides.  Remove from pan.

Gravy

1/4 c flour

2 1/2 c beef stock

Cook flour in pan, (add additional fat if necessary).  Add the beef stock.  Cook until thickened.

OR

Deglaze the pan with 1/2 cup of water.  Add 2 cups of left over beef gravy that you have in the freezer.

Return meatballs to the gravy and cook for 20-40 minutes.  Serve meatballs with mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam.  (Cranberry sauce is a good substitute if you can't find lingonberry jam).

Enjoy!

Great Deals under $50 at Cooking.com!

Nana Noding's Norwegian Waffles

Becca, my oldest daughter is spending a few days at home before heading back to college. When one of the college kids is home, they always want ask us to cook some of their favorites. Yesterday the favorite that was requested was Norwegian waffles. Norwegian waffles are sweeter than regular waffles and have sour cream in the batter. They are usually baked on a heart shaped waffle iron. You can top your waffles with sour cream, preserves, fruit compote or thinly sliced Gjedost cheese, or you can eat them the way Becca likes them--with butter and a sprinkle of sugar. Here's my wife's family recipe for Norwegian waffles.

Norwegian Waffles

3 eggs, separated
1/2 c sugar
1 c flour
1/2 pint sour cream
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t vanilla
pinch salt
1 T melted butter

Whip egg yolks together with sugar. Add flour, baking powder, vanilla, salt, sour cream and butter. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites. Gently fold into batter. Cook on heart shaped waffle iron.

Enjoy!

Great Deals under $50 at Cooking.com!

Keeping Busy

House Hubbie's Home Cooking has been idle for a couple of days, but the house hubbie has not. I have been working on a blog project that has been on the back burners for about a year. It is called Nana and Pa's Place. It is a labor of love in celebration of my wife's big Norwegian American family. The vision I have for it is that it will be a gathering place for people that are connected either as family or friends to Nana an Pa Noding, the couple who started the American branch of the Noding family when they arrived in the USA in the twenties, drove cross country in a Model T (pictured above) and drove back to settle in West Orange, NJ. (That's the short version of the story). I had the idea to do this last year when almost the entire gang gathered on Cape Cod for the wedding of my wife's nephew. I had been working on my family's genealogy and decided it would be great to map out all the descendants of Nana and Pa (there are almost 200 hundred of them). I used a program called Family Tree Maker and the Ancestry website for my own family and used the same for the Nodings. When I got to the Cape I discovered that several other people where working on the family history and we had the idea of a central place we could compare notes. It is a little long in coming, but since I will see many of the clan members over the 4th of July weekend, I wanted to have something to show them.

By the way, I have a couple of great new recipes to post in the next couple of days, so stay tuned!

Enjoy!

Norwegian Style Cucumber Dill Salad

Cucumbers were on sale at the market yesterday, so I made one of my favorite summer salads. I keep it pretty simple, but just taking a couple of extra steps make this salad special. First, I do not peel the cucumbers, rather I score them with a fork or this special tool my wife got when she was a Pampered Chef consultant. If you buy cucumbers that have wax on them to make them shiny, you can keep the skin on by washing the cukes well with a grease cutting dish detergent and hot water, otherwise you will have to peel them.

Another step I take is to crisp up the cukes and get some of the water out of them by salting them well and letting them sit in a colander for an hour or so. Don't skip this step, it makes a difference in the final product.

Finally, if you have fresh dill available, use it. It is the dill that makes this "Norwegian style". You can use other fresh herbs such as mint which will give it a Middle Eastern twist, flat leaf parsley, or oregano, which will give it a Greek twist. Don't use any herbs if they are dry rather than fresh.

My last trick is to make the dish at a day before serving. Although you can eat it right away, allowing it to steep in the dressing and herbs, causes the flavors to develop and meld together.

Norwegian Style Cucumber Dill Salad

4 unwaxed cucumbers
1 medium onion
1 t. salt

Score cucumbers, slice thin. Slice onions thin. Mix in salt and allow to stand in colander for several hours.

1 c. white vinegar
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. water
a few twist of the pepper mill
1 T of fresh dill, chopped

Mix together the vinegar, sugar, water and pepper. Rinse the cuke mixture to remove some of the of the salt. Add to vinegar mixture. Add fresh dill. Refrigerate until service.

Enjoy!

Norwegian Christmas Eve

I enjoy Norwegian Christmas Eve by adoption rather than by heritage having married into a Viking Clan. In our family, as in most families of Scandinavian decent, Christmas Eve is a time for the extended family to gather, usually at Grandma Glady's house, to enjoy the family, sing Christmas Carols, read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke and enjoy a delicious Christmas smorgasbord.

As our family has grown to include other ethnic groups (including me) the smorgasbord has come to include lasagna, salad (for the vegans in our midst) and other non-Scandinavian recipes, but there is always some Norwegian soul food. Christine usually brings the Creamed Herring and Carol the Kjottkaker (meatballs) which are highlights among other main dishes. Thankfully, we have never had to endure the horror of Lutefisk, a dish made from dried cod fish reconstituted in a solution of water and lye. Although it is traditional in many Norwegian families, it never was in the Pierce home.

The main attraction for Christmas Eve is the sweets. There is always a grand assortment of cookies including Sandkaker, Spritz, Serinakaker, and Krumkaker. Lingenberry jam and whipped cream are on hand to enrich the cookies. Sometimes someone has made it over to Brooklyn to pick up a Kringle, which is a special treat. The main event for the sweets is the Risgrǿt (Norwegian Rice Pudding-see recipe below). It always has an almond buried inside and the lucky person to get the almond in their dish is the winner of a marzipan pig. For some reason this honor is usually won by our nephew Daniel.

This year our celebration is changing to meet the realities of changing family circumstances. Grandma is having trouble walking this year so the celebration will be moved to Aunt Margie and Uncle Richard's house. Also, our celebration will not be on Christmas Eve but the night before as growing families now have to be in different places to share themselves fairly with the in-laws. Whenever it takes place though, the gathering of as much of the extended family as possible around the Christmas tree is one of the most looked forward to events of the year. The warm conversation, the joyful singing, the reverent recounting of the Christmas story and food filled with memories gives us a perspective on what this time of year is all about.

Grandma Glady's Risgrǿt

4 cups long grain white rice
8 cups whole milk
1 t. salt
4 T. unsalted butter
2 cups heavy cream
4 T. sugar
1 t. vanilla

In a heavy sauce pan, cook rice with milk and salt over very gentle heat until rice is thick and tender, stirring frequently. Keep an eye on the rice as it cooks and if milk is absorbed add more milk. When finished rice should be tender (taste it to be sure it is not al dente) and it should be a very thick porridge almost like a soft ball of dough.

Whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla until soft peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the cooked rice. Chill.

Serve risgrǿt in a large bowl with an almond hidden in the bowl. Allow people to serve themselves. Serve risgrǿt with lingonberry jam. The person who finds the almond wins a prize.