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Traditionally they were reindeer herders calling themselves boazovázzi, meaning “reindeer walker”, herding their reindeer on foot or on wooden planks from the tundra pasture to the summer pasture at sea. Nowadays though, the Sami do their herding driving an ATV or a snowmobile, common vehicles in the countryside in many parts of North of Norway, my homeplace included. Today only a minority, a mere 3000, of the Sami are reindeer herders.

Today the Sami of Norway have their own semi-autonomous parliament situated in Karasjok, but their history is the same as natives all over the world, of injustice and hardship. In Norway their traditional singing, joik, was forbidden and Sami children were taken from their parents to boarding schools in order to make them Norwegian. Hence their language and culture suffered.

The reindeer is their livelihood and staple food, but also fish and berries, particularly lingonberries and cloudberries, contribute to their diet. The Sami live by a nose to tail diet where the heart, blood, brain, fat, bones, even the hoofs, are utilized as food. Of the blood the Sami make blood sausages in reindeer intestines, blood pancakes and blodkams, a sort of dumpling. Whereas the blood sausages are served as side order with the meat, the blood pancakes are topped with sugar or cloudberry jam for dessert.

Foto: Terje Rakke/Nordic Life/Visitnorway.

Foto: Terje Rakke/Nordic Life/Visitnorway.

Drying is probably the oldest method of conservation. Only food low in fat is suitable and reindeer meat is perfect due to its fat content of two percent. Dried reindeer meat, similar to beef jerky, is above all handy in a wayfaring culture. Filled with energy and with long durability it is the perfect companion for a nomad, as dried cod was for the Vikings and other seafarers.

Today dried reindeer is little eaten outside the Sami culture, but in the midst of the shiny barcode buildings in Oslo, the restaurant Maaemo, has a signature dish that speaks both to old Norwegian food culture and the Sami culture: Sour cream porridge topped with dried reindeer meat.

Reindeer meat is healthier than red meat and high in omega 3 and vitamin B12. Their diet is a far-cry from the soya based concentrates industrialized food production from cattle to salmon rely on. The herds travel a long distance living on heather, herbs and berries in the summer and in the winter, lichen hidden beneath the snow.

Bidos

Sami bidos

Bidos is a stew the Sami serve at weddings or other special occasions. It consists of slow cooked reindeer meat, including the heart, potatoes and carrots. No seasoning is used, yet the stew has a rich taste reflecting the pasture of the reindeer.

2 tbsp flour
butter
400 g reindeer meat
1 tbsp mustard (optional)
0,5 l water
6 shallot onions
2 carrots
2 potatoes
salt and pepper

1. Season the meat and mix with the flour in a bowl.
2. Melt the butter in a wide pan. Fry the meat until turned grey.
3. Add the mustard and water and bring to boil.
4. Peel the vegetables and slice in cubes. Add to the pan and boil for about 45 minutes until the meat is tender.

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The Norwegian version consists of meat (often salted lamb or pork, or beef), lots of potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables, leeks, everything cubed and cooked until tender. So far, it is not a far cry from its English relative, but in Norway it is served with flatbrød, a traditional unleavened bread, thin like Indian papadums.

In Denmark the name reveals its history. Skipperlabskovs, sea captain’s lobscouse, started as a dish among sailors in Northern Europe. It was spread to the ports of Hamburg and Liverpool, leaving a strong imprint in Liverpool where it became the city’s signature dish. Liverpudlians are nicknamed scouse, a contraction of lobscouse and the city even celebrates “Global scouse day” on February 28, with the motto “be scouse, eat scouse”.

Lobscouse came to Norway in the beginning of the 19th century and was cherished from the start. With its sparse ingredients, it quickly adapted to the Norwegian diet. Potatoes, root vegetables and salt meat. Lobscouse is always cooked in the largest cooking pots of the kitchen and is sometimes served during weddings. I like to make it with pinnekjøtt, dried and smoked ribs of sheep, but an alternative is to use smoked gammon.

Lobscouse, lapskaus, is a traditional Norwegian stew which started as a sailor’s dish.

Norwegian lobscouse stew (makes about 6)

Stock:
1 kg ribs of sheep (or smoked gammon)
3 litre water
2–3 onions
2–3 carrots
2–3 celery sticks
2 bay leaves
1 tsp whole peppercorns

Lobscouse stew:
1,3 litre stock
6 carrots
2 root parsley (or other root vegetables)
12 big potatoes
2 leeks
meat (ribs of sheep or gammon)
pepper
chives

1. Soak the ribs of sheep for two days. Rinse the water half way through.
2. Peel and cut the vegetables for the stock in chunks and boil with the spices for 2 hours. Strain through a sieve and push with the back of a spoon.
3. Add the ribs of sheep (or the gammon) and boil until tender, about 3 hours.
4. Cut the meat in cubes and leave aside.
5. Bring the stock back to boil. First add the cubed carrot, then the rest of the vegetables, all cubed. Boil until the vegetables are tender and the potatoes start to get mushy.
6. Season with pepper and scatter chopped chives. Serve with flatbrød.

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I remember my grandmother carefully folding plastic bags and placed them in the kitchen drawer. They were wrinkled and worn but were to be reused. On the kitchen table top there was a large bread box. The bread was eaten, day after day, even if it was old and dry. My grandparents and great-aunt treated their possessions with great respect, and even plastic bags were treated as royal table cloths.

Me, I prefer to eat freshly baked bread and avoid bread older than two days. I have become better at not throwing away meat and vegetables, but when it comes to bread there is certainly room for improvement. I am not alone. Nowadays consumers throw away large amounts of food, especially bread. Each Norwegian throws away 51 kilos of food every year. In addition there is all the food that grocery stores throw away and the food that never reach the stores because they are sorted away at the farmers.

We have a long tradition of using leftovers, especially stale bread. Bread pudding, apple trifle or tilslørte bondepiker and French toast are classic recipes honoring old bread. French toast is an old European dish appearing in a German cookbook in Medieval times, called «Arme Ritter».

I use the recipe of the Danish chef Thomas Herman. He fries the bread in cinnamon sugar until it is caramelized. White bread is commonly used for French toast but finer breads like brioche or Christmas cake is extra tasty. If you have even more leftovers you would like to use, you can serve the toast with crushed gingerbread men.

French toast with gingerbread crumbs (makes 4)

1 organic egg
100 ml full-fat milk
4 slices stale bread, preferably panettone or julebrød
4 gingerbread men
4 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
a knob of butter
ice cream to serve

1. Whisk egg and milk until blended. Soak the bread for about 30 minutes.
2. Crush the gingerbread until crumbs and fry in butter and 1 tbsp of the sugar for 5 minutes. Allow to cool on a piece of baking sheet.
3. Mix the rest of the sugar with cinnamon. Melt the butter in a frying pan.
4. Dip the bread in the cinnamonsugar. Fry until golden and caramelized.
5. Serve with ice cream and gingerbread crumbs.

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The dish is quite similarly prepared but the Danes, as they do with another dish the countries have in common, rice cream, chooses a more flamboyant direction. They serve their leftovers with French refinement, sauce béarnaise.

A more relaxed way is to serve the fry-up with fried eggs and pickled cucumbers or beets. Apart from that you need a few potatoes, carrots, onion and some left-over meat, to form the basis. Add to that whatever you may have in your fridge such as brussels sprouts or mushrooms and a splash of HP-sauce. Fry for a good half an hour, at least, until the vegetables are soft but start to crispen up on the outside.

Pytt i panne or Scandinavian fry-up.

Scandinavian fry-up (makes 2)

1 onion
frying oil
2 carrots
4 big potatoes (raw or boiled)
left-over sausages
salt and pepper
2 tbsp HP-sauce
a handful flat-leaf parsley
pickled cucumbers or beets
2 eggs

1. Peel the onion and finely chop. Fry gently for 5 minutes in a wide frying pan.
2. Peel the carrots and potatoes and cut in cubes. Fry for 20 minutes while stir once in a while. If you use leftover potatoes, wait until the sausages.
3. Now add the sausages, also cut in cubes, for at 15 minutes.
4. Season with salt and pepper and add a splash of HP-sauce and finely chopped parsley.
5. Serve with fried eggs, pickled vegetables and crusty bread.

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More than 100 years on rice porridge is still featuring on the Norwegian Christmas menu along with spiced Christmas cookies and citrus fruits. The orange though has been replaced by the clementine as the quintessential Christmas fruit. Not long ago fruit were rare in Norway. My mother also has fond memories of the orange. Born in 1940 at the outbreak of WW2 in Norway, she remembers how she every Christmas received a shoebox with chocolate and an orange. This was the only orange and chocolate she had for a year.

I on the other hand remembers my grandmother’s boxes filled with traditional Christmas cookies. A household should traditionally make at least 7 different Christmas cookies, but grandmother made even more. Entering the pantry with the adorned boxes was like stepping inside a candy shop from a Roald Dahl story. They were all there. Round serina cookies, jødekaker topped with bits of almond, long sprut cookies, frail sand cakes with almond flour, rectangular goro cookies with beautiful patterns, fattigmenn fried in lard (they were not sweet, hence I never liked them), hjortetakk (a type of Norwegian doughnut but much denser) and thin and crispy spiced gingerbread cookies.

My family gathered for Christmas. My mother and sister to the right. My Great Aunt to the left of my sister. My father and two brothers in the middle. My grandparents in the back. My aunt and uncle and my mother’s uncle to the left. The year is 1967 or 68.

The oldest Norwegian cookies were fried in waffle irons, but the stove revolutionized the household in the 19th century. Now it was feasible for a housewife to make an array of cookies herself. The cookies we eat today for Christmas started as all-round cookies and could well be served at weddings, Easter or other holidays, but sometimes during the 1800s they became strongly associated with Christmas and have retained that status ever since. There is no Christmas without these small and dry biscuits although today few bake more than gingerbread cookies and perhaps another cookie like serina or cinnamon cookies.

Many of the traditions we look upon as archetypical Norwegian originated in Europe, particularly Denmark. The tradition with seven types of Christmas cookies is also home to Finland and Sweden, and the Swedes gobbled porridge and lutefisk as early as 1740. Looking in a Danish Christmas cookbook you will find many of the same cookies as in Norway, not to mention the roast pork with crackling (ribbensteg) and the rice pudding (ris a la mande) we eat for Christmas Eve. In sum, Norwegian Christmas is a Danish affair.

Gingerbread nuts (peppernødder in Danish and pfeffernusse in German), go back to the 1500s or 1600s. They were rich in spices and sugar, luxury items well into the 19th century. In the Medieval Ages spice was a symbol of wealth and cookies were lavishly seasoned. 600 years on it is still the mix of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and cloves that represents the scent of Christmas. A new iPhone may be cool and handy, but it will never achieve the magic of a little gingerbread nut.

How to prepare the gingerbread nuts.

Gingerbread nuts

This is a fairly large recipe yielding about 6 baking plates.

100 g butter
2 eggs
200 g sugar
200 ml dark syrup
at least 450 g flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1,5 tsp freshly ground pepper
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp baking soda

1. Melt the butter. Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until pale. Stir the syrup and butter into the eggs.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients well and mix into the batter until you have a dough. Wrap in plastic and keep in the refrigerator overnight. It is important to keep it overnight because it makes the dough much easier to work with.
3. The next day: Preheat oven to 175C/350F/Gas 4. Roll the dough into thin sausages, then cut in 1 cm pieces. Roll into small balls and bake in the oven for about 8 minutes. Keep in a box, preferably old and adorned.

More Nordic Christmas Food?

Creamy rice porridge
Danish rice pudding (ris a la mande)
Scandinavian smorgasbord
Mulled wine with ginger
Norwegian sweet lefse
Cinnamon cookies (Berits brune pinner)
Christmas fruit salad

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While soup today mostly refers to salty soups, the sweet soup played a pivotal part in the diet to earlier generations in Norway. For instance oatmeal soup used to be served at elementary schools in Oslo from the 1880s to 1928 and again during WW2, this time with the aid of Denmark and Sweden.

There were two branches of sweet soup, milk soups and fruit soups. My favourite was my grandmother’s slow-cooked milk soup with oats and macaroni. Another was the dried fruit soup with prunes and barley my mother made.

Gudbrandsdalen valley.

Otta river of Gudbrandsdalen.

Poor man’s grain

For 1,000 years barley was the cornerstone in the Norwegian diet. It was the main ingredient in unleavened bread (flatbrød), beer and porridge. As people grew richer and the oats and rice grain became more affordable, barley porridge was replaced by oatmeal porridge and rice porridge. Today barley is a major cereal grain, but most of the crop becomes animal fodder.

In the Gudbrandsdalen valley however barley has retained its pivotal role. Gudbrandsdalen is an area with many farms, grass roofs, tree churches and the fierce but beautiful Otta river with is green hue running through the valley. Little rain, cold winters and warm summers make perfect conditions for the hardy barley. In a country with a plethora of dialects, this is where the dialect is preserved like no other place in Norway. Thus it makes perfect sense that a stone mill from 1865 still grinds barley from the fields surrounding the mill.

I want to go back to the soup I have not eaten since childhood. A fruit soup thick with barley. It is sweet, hearty and nutritious and a walk down my memory lane.

Dried fruit soup with barley

The soup is easy to make and the flavour is based on dried fruit such as prunes and apricots. I like cranberries and add fresh ginger and lemon to boost the flavour. The soup is quite thick, almost like a stew thanks to the barley. I serve it with dried apples that I have dried in the oven for an hour on 120C.

75 g barley
1,25 litre water + soaking water
a knob of fresh ginger
100 g prunes
80 g cranberries
juice of ½ lemon or 2 clementines
50 g sugar (or 5 tbsp maple syrup)
dried apple slices (optional)

1. They day before soak the barley in water.
2. The next day, rinse the grain, add new water and boil for 25 minutes.
3. Add peeled and sliced ginger and the rest of the ingredients and cook for approximately 25 minutes. You want the dried fruit to flavour and sweeten the water but still hold its shape. Serve with dried apples.

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Scandinavian rice porridge with cinnamon, sugar and butter.

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Scandinavian rice porridge (makes 3–4)

You need a short grain type of rice high in starch to make the porridge creamy. In Norway there is a particular type of short grain rice called “porridge rice” (grøtris), but you can substitute it with Italian risotto rice (e.g. arborio or carnaroli) which is also starchy. The Norwegian type of rice needs very long cooking time, approximately 50-60 minutes; and it is this long cooking time that makes it so creamy. The parenthesis below denotes measures if you are using risotto rice.

200 ml water (100 ml water)
700 ml full fat milk (500 ml full fat milk)
125 g short grain rice (225 g risotto rice)
½ vanilla pod
20 g sugar
a pinch of salt

1. Heat the water in a thick-based pan. Split half the vanilla pod and scoop out the seeds. Add the rice, vanilla seed and pod when the water boils.

2. Let boil on low-medium heat for about 10 minutes until most of the water is absorbed.

3. Pour in the milk and let simmer on as little heat as possible. Make sure to stir once in a while to prevent the porridge from burning, particularly towards the end. The lid should be (almost) on to prevent the milk from evaporating.

4. In the end, season the rice with salt and the sugar. Spoon the porridge on a plate. Place a doll-up of butter in the middle and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Serve immediately.

Note: Cooking porridge is not an exact science, and if the temperature is too high the liquid will be absorbed too quickly. It this happens, pour in some more milk. If you use the porridge rice, let it cook for 50-60 minutes. With risotto rice you only need 20-30 minutes. For the risotto rice I would have added a bit of heavy cream to add some creaminess.

More Nordic dishes?

Rhubarb tart 1938
Danish Æbleflæsk (pork apples)
Tilslørte bondepiker (Nordic apple trifle)

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No-knead cinnamon buns.

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Every time I am at home in North of Norway I make cinnamon buns for my mother. She keeps them in the freezer, serving the buns to guests dropping by. I have made them for as long as I can remember. They will always follow me and bring back images of coffee tables, guests and summer in the North.

Cinnamon buns is a Scandinavian classic. These cinnamon buns differ from other Scandinavian buns; with more egg and butter they are denser and richer. Makes about 24 cinnamon buns.

No-knead cinnamon buns

Muffins papers

The dough:
1,2 litre wheat flour (about 600 gr)
175 g cold butter
3 eggs
250 ml milk
50 g dried yeast
1 tbsp sugar

The filling:
100 g softened butter
75 g sugar
3 tbsp ground cinnamon
300 ml raisins (optional)

The dough:
1. Cut the butter in cubes and crumble the butter in the flour until you have coarse crumbs.
2. Add the dried yeast. Make a well in the flour.
3. Add tepid milk and lightly beaten eggs (beaten with a fork).
4. With a wooden spoon, assemble the dough quickly until it just comes together. Do not knead.
5. Cover and let rise in a warm spot for an hour. Because of all the butter, the dough will not rise as easily as other cinnamon doughs.

The filling:
6. With a wooden spoon, beat together the butter, sugar and cinnamon.

7. Divide the dough into two. Because of the butter, you do not need to flour the surface. Roll out each of the doughs to a rectangle of about 30 x 40 cm (11 x 15 inches).
8. Spread evenly the filling, makes sure they go all the way to the edge, and scatter the raisins.
9. Make sure one of the longer edges of the rectangle is facing you. Roll the dough away from you into a thick sausage.
10. Cut the dough into individual pieces, about 2–3 cm (or 1 inch) thick and place in muffin papers.
11. Allow to rise for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200 C.
12. Bake in the oven for 12–15 minutes in the middle rack. Drizzle with powdered sugar glaze before serving.

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But there was one thing the real estate agent forgot to mention in the ad. The cherry trees. I lived in the new apartment for a month until I discovered the secret of the tree right outside the apartment building.

– Look! It has to be cherries! I yelled at my son Loukas.

They were dark red and sour, and there were four of them belonging to our apartment block. We picked the cherries, first just a little box in case others also wanted some. Then we fetched the curtain staircase to reach the top berries. Picking cherries became a summer ritual, where Loukas also picked cherries and ran around the tree enjoying the grass under his feet. He also loved shooting the stones with the cherry pitter.

We made cherry jam and preserved cherries with sugar, cinnamon and lemon. The preserved cherries are waiting for December when they will take part in the finest Scandinavian Christmas dessert, Danish rice pudding with cherry sauce, also called ris a la mande.

Note: Store the cherries in the fridge wrapped in a plastic bag as soon as possible as they quickly lose quality at room temperature.

Preserved cherries in syrup.

Preserved cherries in syrup

jam jars with airtight lid
1 kilo sweet or sour cherries
1 litre water
350 g sugar
1 cinnamon stick
4–5 rinds of 1 lemon

1. First sterilize the jars. Firstly, choose glass jars with an airtight lid. Wash in hot soapy water and rinse. Preheat the oven to 100C/212F. Place jars and lids on an oven tray and heat in the oven for 15 minutes. (Leave them in the oven until you fill them).

2. Place water, sugar, cinnamon stick and lemon rind in a saucepan and bring to boil. Let simmer for 30 minutes to enhance the flavours of the syrup.

3. Meanwhile, stem and wash the cherries. Remove the pits with a cherry pitter.

4. Add the cherries to the syrup and bring to boil at a low temperature or else they will break.

5. Remove the cinnamon stick with a slotted spoon. Use the slotted spoon to transfer the cherries to the jars and then pour over the syrup. Seal immediately and turn upside down for two minutes. Turn upright and place in a cold and dark place for December, or up to years.

Cherry sauce for Christmas

Put the cherries aside and bring the syrup to boil. Adjust the sweetness by adding lemon juice and thicken with maizenna. Remove the pan from the heat and add the cherries.

Hungry for more cherry recipes?

Danish rice pudding with cherry sauce
Cherry pie from Moldova

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At one of the other stands they had the most beautiful violet new potatoes. They were troll potatoes still covered in soil to protect them and to remind us of their origin. From my local fruit and vegetable store I had bought dill umbrellas for my pickled cucumbers and a thick bunch of chives.

“Wealth eats it with butter, poverty dips it into a little salt, Isak savoured it with sour cream on Sundays. The blessed and bold potato!”

The quotes are from “Growth of the soil” by Knut Hamsun.

Potato salad with chives, red onions and celery.

Potato salad and pickled cucumber.

Last Sunday in August. Summer still.

New Potato salad (makes 3–4)

12 new potatoes
5 tbsp olive oil (extra virgin)
2 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 small red onion
2 celery sticks
chives
salt and pepper
dill umbrella (optional)

1. Boil the new potatoes with their skin on until just cooked. Allow to cool for half an hour.
2. Mix olive oil, mustard, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add finely chopped red onions and small cubes of celery sticks.
3. Divide the smallest potatoes into two and the biggest potatoes into three. Carefully add to the bowl without crushing the potatoes. Add a generous amount of chopped chives. Garnish with dill umbrellas.

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