When we get together with Bestemor and Bestefar, we sit around the table together quite often. We used to laugh when going through photo albums … there was always the shot of folks around the dinner table, forks and knives in hand, and the light fixture in the way. Maybe that’s a Norwegian thing. I guess it’s a family thing. It’s always good to cook and eat together.
Yes, there are hundreds of ways to make potato salad. One of my favorites, though, is the way my mother-in-law makes it. She shared her recipe.
16 ounces sour cream
6 ounces mayonnaise
3 tablespoons dill pickle brine
1/2 apple, chopped
2 dill pickles, chopped
1/2 leek, sliced
7 potatoes, cooked and diced
Mix all together. Let set. Serve with dinner from the grill.
I ran across a recipe for mandarin and almond shrimp salad, which I thought sounded tasty.
Yes, it was. VERY tasty.
We ate it with grilled potatoes …
… and grilled salmon.
Yummy wine.
Also sliced cucumbers in vinegar.
I’m full again just thinking about it.
I bought a non-electric krumkake iron (that could be used on any stovetop) before we moved back home from Norway. I used it for the first time the other day when my mother-in-law showed me how to make krumkake. Ten years later. You can never accuse me of rushing into anything. So, here they are. Mmm, so tasty!
Krumkake
2 eggs
sugar
butter
flour
2 or 3 drops of lemon juice
Weigh the eggs. Use the same weight for the rest of the ingredients. (For example, our two eggs weighed 110 grams. We used 110 grams each of sugar, butter and flour.)
Melt butter in saucepan. Set aside and let cool.
Mix egg and sugar well.
Sift flour, then add to the egg and sugar mixture.
Pour in melted butter. Add lemon juice. Mix together. Let stand for a bit.
Heat krumkake iron on stove. Put a spoonful of mix on the iron and close. Heat on one side for 15 seconds, turn over and heat for another 15 seconds. Lift krumkake with a knife. Roll immediately.
(I got my krumkake roller, made by Bethany Housewares — which we drove past on our way to Decorah — with my gift certificate from Hansen Hardware.)
Remember the wine!
(I asked my mother-in-law if she would like a glass of wine. I thought she said, “No. We’re going to bake.” What she really said was, “Now! We’re going to bake.” (Now in Norwegian sounds just like “no.”) Silly me. Thinking she would turn down wine.
After the syttende mai feast, I wanted to give some of the dishes a try. I made meatballs, but they’re really more kjøttkaker (meat cakes), and shrimp salad. Bløtkake (whipped cream cake) is up next, thanks to my mother-in-law.
Here are the makings for the shrimp salad.
This recipe, from the amazing Norwegian National Recipes by Arne Brimi, is for Joan. I used the recipe for the kjøttkaker, and my husband made the brown sauce. We served it with boiled potatoes and ertestuing (pea stew).
As Anne Bakke made the syttende mai dinner, she kept mentioning “the Waldorf cookbook.” In fact, all of the recipes she used that night came from it. I wanted to get my hands on this cookbook. I finally found one from a collector just west of here.
The best I can determine, the cookbook was published in 1981, in honor of Tillie Rasmusson, who was food service director at Waldorf College for most of the 20th century. According to The Iowan, “She was beloved for her welcoming campus kitchen, housed in the basement of Salveson Hall, and for her delicious cinnamon rolls, baked every weekend. Waldorf students would reportedly make their travel plans around Rasmusson’s baking schedule, returning to campus in time for rolls fresh from the oven. So legendary were those rolls that two of them were placed in the cornerstone of a new building dedicated in 1955 — Rasmusson Hall.”
According to Waldorf, “Rasmusson Hall (1955) is a three-story residence hall for approximately 56 students. It is named for Tillie Rasmusson, a former food service director who was beloved for her caramel rolls.”
The cookbook opens with Tillie’s Chapter and Recipes.
“We feel it appropriate that this cookbook be named in memory of Miss Tillie Rasmusson, since for nearly fifty years she served delicious meals to thousands of students, teachers, and friends at Waldorf College. If there is one thing everyone remembers about Tillie’s cooking, I’m sure that it would be her cinnamon rolls. Students, especially the men, who went home for the weekend would return Sunday morning in order to enjoy Tillie’s rolls.
“Just before Tillie retired I asked her about the amounts purchased and the amounts served at the college while she was cook. She fed around 375 students and teachers every day. As you read the quantities remember everything was ‘home baked.’ There were no cake mixes, no frozen foods and no instant potatoes. When I mention potatoes, she didn’t have an electric peeler for many years, so they peeled the potatoes by hand.
“40 sacks of flour every two months (100 lb. sacks)
150 lbs. of potatoes a day
60 dozen eggs three times a week
150 lbs. of butter a week
150 lbs. of roast beef for one meal or
10 large turkeys
12 gal. of canned fruit for sauce
75 gal. of milk every day
Every Saturday she baked
50 loaves of bread
500 buns for maid-rites for Saturday evening
15 doz. large cinnamon rolls
55 pies — each pie cut in 7 pieces”
That section includes the ingredients for rolls, although I’m not sure whether they were cinnamon rolls, caramel rolls … or both, but the recipe was for making a couple hundred rolls. It also has 13 other recipes, with a few Norwegian delicacies, such as fattigman and julebrød (Christmas bread). The rest of the cookbook is filled with recipes — Norwegian and otherwise — from others.
We went to a Chinese restaurant with friends we visited over spring break. The kids loved the food, and they really looked forward to getting fortune cookies. They had lots of questions about where the fortunes come from, who writes them, how do they think of them and how do they know who will get them. We conjured up a table with a bunch of wise, old folks sitting around it and writing fortunes for others they’ll never meet. (Yeah, we’re a bunch of romantics.)
They wondered if the fortunes in cookies were true and meaningful. I said, well, they can be, and I told them about the fortune I’ve carried for almost 10 years.
I’d just had lunch with my youngest brother. I was up visiting from Florida, just a couple of months after moving back to the States from Norway, hoping his second daughter would be born before I returned home. He looked at my fortune and said, of course, we know what that’s about, right? His baby. I said, aw, hell no. We know that one’s coming. This one’s about my baby.
A year later, almost to the day, my son was born. My dear, sweet boy … the child I wanted for so long.
I tend to crank up the superstition when things seem hopeless. So, yeah. That last one up there about hard work paying off? I’m hoping that has significant meaning soon. I think I’ll hold on to that one. We’ll see what happens.
I entered a giveaway contest in December on my favorite Italian food site, Educated Palate: Giuliano & Lael Hazan’s blog. What makes it a favorite? Beautiful photos. Heartbreakingly delicious food. (And wonderful cookbooks!) They talk about two places I love, Italy and Florida, and two of the things that make life worth living, family and food.
Guess what? I won! I won this beautiful, delicious panettone and a book all about it. Thank you so much, Lael and Giuliano! It was wonderful!
It’s so nice to have lots of help in the kitchen. I had the best help with pumpkin pie today.
Pastry for 9-inch one-crust pie
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon shortening
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 to 3 tablespoons water
Cut shortening into flour and salt until particles are size of small peas. Sprinkle in water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until all flour is moistened and pastry almost cleans side of bowl.
Gather pastry into a ball. Shape into flattened round on lightly floured surface. Roll pastry 2 inches larger than inverted pie plate. Fold pastry into quarters. Unfold and ease into pie plate, pressing firmly against bottom and side. Cut off extra pastry, then pinch together.
Pumpkin pie filling
2 eggs
1 can (16 ounces) pumpkin or 2 cups cooked pumpkin
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 2/3 cup evaporated milk
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare pastry. Beat eggs slightly with hand beater. Beat in remaining ingredients. Pour filling into pastry-lined pie plate. Put in oven. Bake 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake until knife inserted in center comes out clean (took me about another hour). Cool and serve with sweetened whipped cream.
Sweetened Whipped Cream
1 cup chilled whipping cream
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat ingredients together in a chilled bowl until mixture is stiff.
This is for @mommadona.
Prairie Rose Acres Apple Preserves
12 cups apples, peeled, cored & sliced
2 cups water
2 tablespoons lemon juice (we used lime juice because we didn’t have lemon juice in the house)
2 packages powdered pectin
8 cups sugar
4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
Combine apples, water and lemon juice in a large pot. Bring to a boil and simmer up to 30 minutes. Run the apples through the blender and return them to the pot. Stir in pectin and bring to a full rolling boil, stirring often. Add sugar. Return to a full rolling boil, then boil hard for 1 minute, stirring often. Remove from heat. Add nutmeg. Immediately pour hot mixture into sterile jars. Put on lids. Boil in a water canner for 40 minutes. (You can halve this recipe. It’s our version of a couple of recipes, and we doubled the amounts.)
9/2011
