Norwegian Noel
When talking to members of my family from Norway back in December, they told me the delicious food they had for their Christmas dinner! After their descriptions of the mouth-watering dishes, I knew I had to try my own hand at Norwegian cuisine. They recommended Pinnekjøtt with a side of mashed rutabaga, and even offered to send me the salted lamb needed for Pinnekjøtt!
Although they had intended to send it to me for a Christmas meal, corona delayed the shipping and it ended up reaching me weeks later. We’d made plans to visit Norway during winter break months ago, however, corona complicated the plans a little bit, making it unrealistic. So I figured this would be the perfect way to bring a little bit of Norwegian Christmas to our home in Virginia.
Because this meal was intended for the holidays, each item I chose is typically served as a part of a traditional Norwegian Christmas dinner.
PINNEKJØTT
Origin
Pinnekjøtt is the central focus of a typical Norwegian Christmas feast. It's a truly authentic Norwegian dish that was even granted a designation of origin in Norway.
If cooked correctly, Pinnekjøtt is tender lamb ribs often served with rotmos (a mash that’s comprised of potatoes, rutabaga, turnips, and carrots). The literal translation of the dish is “stick meat”. The dish’s name is believed to be a reference to the rib bone, as in a rib “stick”, however, it may also refer to the twigs positioned at the bottom of the saucepan while cooking the lamb.
Surprisingly, a fairly traditional method is still used to preserve the lamb. Salting is a method that dates back to the Viking era. Although brine is the typical medium used to pack the meat with salt, sea salt is more commonly used today because the brine method is so time-consuming. After adding salt, the meat is smoked and then packaged.
Process
Usually, I base my international cooking on a recipe because I’m unfamiliar with the food I’m cooking. Since I had never had any experience with making Norwegian food, I asked my family in Norway to teach me. They instructed me to first dunk the meat in water before cooking. Because it’s encased in salt to preserve it, the meat needs to be soaked in water to rid it of its excessively salty taste. To do this I let the meat soak in water for about 24 hours before I started cooking it. Every 8 hours I drained the salty water, replacing it with fresh water each time. After the third time, I took it out of the water and prepared a large pot to cook it in.
Once the meat was prepared, I placed it in a steamer, set a timer for three hours, and started getting ingredients ready for the rest of the items for the meal. My parents advised me to cook the lamb in our instant pot because it would be ready faster. However, I wanted to respect the Norwegian method of cooking Pinnekjøtt, so I decided to use a steamer and let it cook slowly as my Norwegian relatives had recommended. Once it was tender and almost falling off the bone I took the meat out and plated it, ready to eat.
Taste
The meat was the perfect texture, the slow cooking truly did it justice. Even as I was taking it out of the pot I had to be careful as to not detach the meat from the bone. It was the perfect silky texture, succulent and juicy. My one issue with the meat was its salt content. Because it was salted for preservation I knew it would be salty, but my problem was not knowing exactly how long to let it soak. In retrospect, I should have probably let it soak in the water for longer because it ended up being extremely salty and was hard to eat on its own. However, this worked perfectly with the mashed rutabaga I made with it, they balanced each other out to make a delicious meal.
MASHED RUTABAGA
Origin
Mashed rutabaga is often thought of as a mashed potato substitute. However, it is so much more than that. Rutabaga is common in Scandinavian countries and Russia, because of its ability to grow in cold temperatures. It’s associated most with Sweden, and the name “rutabaga” is actually of Swedish descent. Sometimes rutabagas are even referred to as the “Swedish turnip” or “swede” It’s also enjoyed in the US especially in New England and the upper Midwest. Although rutabaga and potatoes are often categorized together, surprisingly rutabaga is more closely related to turnips and cabbages than potatoes and is a cross between the two.
In cooking, all parts of the rutabaga plant are utilized. The leaves are often cooked with boiling water until tender, similar to how mustard greens are cooked. The root is often pickled and served with other root vegetables such as turnips and carrots. They can also be served raw or cooked and mashed, which is how I decided to cook them.
Process
I had to first remove the protective wax from the rutabaga, so I started scrubbing the wax from its skin, then I had to peel its skin with a potato peeler. Then I cut the rutabaga into cubes so they would cook evenly.
To get the rutabaga to the right texture to mash, it has to be allowed to soften first. To do this I put the rutabaga in a saucepan and filled it with boiling water so that all of the rutabaga cubes would be submerged underwater. I then let the rutabaga cook for about half an hour before removing it from the heat.
Once the rutabaga had softened, I drained the water from the saucepan and used a fork to mash the rutabaga to the consistency of mashed potatoes and no chunks remaining. Then I seasoned the mashed rutabaga. To serve, I incorporated heaps of butter, some black pepper, and salt into the mix, making sure not to put too much salt to balance out the saltiness of the lamb.
Taste
The texture of the rutabaga was quite similar to mashed potatoes. I’d read that rutabaga is served best with lots of butter because it soaks it up well. With the butter, it was even softer and almost melted in your mouth with each bite. This addition especially was reminiscent of the mashed potatoes I have every Thanksgiving with my family. Although it resembled mashed potatoes, the taste of rutabaga was nothing like mashed potatoes. The rutabaga had a more distinct and powerful taste and a bit of a bitter aftertaste. I actually preferred this taste to mashed potatoes because it was more flavorful and rich. Even without adding much seasoning, it was delicious and the perfect complement to the salty lamb ribs.
KARAMELLPUDDING
Origin
Karamellpudding is the perfect conclusion to a Norwegian Christmas dinner. It is a simple dessert that closely resembles flan and creme caramel because of its jello-like consistency and caramel top. Caramelization is a common method used in Norwegian cooking, such as with Toscakaka, a caramelized almond cake, and brunost or “brown cheese”, a sweet caramelized cheese.
Process
The ingredients for the pudding are fairly simple, it consists of an egg, sugar, vanilla, and cream base, and is covered with caramel. Although the shopping list for the dessert is short, the process is pretty daunting if you’re unfamiliar with the dish.
The caramel used to coat the pudding is simply made from melted sugar, however, the tricky part is what comes next. While the caramel is still in liquid form, you coat a loaf pan with the melted sugar and allow it to cool in that shape.
This was the tricky part for me. I ended up having to experiment with the caramel, which resulted in me scrapping three batches before it reached the perfect color, shape, and consistency. My main issue was the sugar. We were out of granulated sugar, so I decided to try caramelizing brown sugar. The color of the brown sugar completely threw me. When caramelizing with granulated sugar, once the sugar reaches a dark golden brown color, it’s ready to use. However, because the brown sugar was already close to this color to start with, it was hard to gauge when it was caramelized. So my first batch amounted to burnt sugar.
My second batch was a little more successful, it didn’t burn and I even poured it into the loaf pan to use, however, because brown sugar contains molasses, it was a lot thicker than caramelized granulated sugar. I had to use a spatula to spread the liquid caramel along the bottom and sides of the pan which caused a whole slew of problems on its own. First, the caramel wasn’t sticking to the sides of the pan and came off easily. Because the caramel cools fairly quickly this became a big problem for me and I eventually came to the conclusion that brown sugar simply wouldn’t be effective for this dessert.
For my third batch, I found granulated Indian sugar in our pantry and decided to give it a shot. It was going perfectly, but I ended up burning this batch too, for different reasons. I wasn’t super familiar with cooking caramel before this dessert, so I didn’t realize that I had a very small window between when the caramel was ready and when it would burn.
But I was still determined to perfect this dessert, so I made a fourth batch from the Indian sugar. This batch was near perfect. I had the loaf pan ready and made sure that immediately once the sugar had caramelized, I poured it into the pan. Because it wasn’t as thick as the brown sugar caramel, the caramel was fairly easy to spread around the sides.
Once all the sides of the load pan were coated, I set the loaf pan aside so the coating could cool. As it cooled, it was interesting to see the small cracks that formed in the coating.
As it cooled, I made the pudding, which was the easiest part of the process. Once the caramel had cooled completely, I poured the pudding into the caramel-coated loaf pan. Next, I placed the raw pudding inside of a roaster in the oven. Then I boiled some water and poured it into the roasting pan to make a water bath for the pudding to cook.
As I was making the dessert, I realized I had to let the pudding cook for an hour and a half, cool, and then let it set overnight in the refrigerator. I’d missed this step in my first read of the recipe, so I decided to serve it after dinner the next day.
When the pudding was done, I let it cool in the loaf pan and put it in the refrigerator to set overnight.
Once the pudding had properly set, I loosened the sides of the pudding from inside of the loaf pan and flipped it over on a large serving plate. I cut into the pudding, plated it, and topped it with a few blueberries to serve!
Taste
The pudding was delicious! It was interesting to taste the difference from American desserts. Although it was similar to the flan we have here, all flan I’d tasted in America is exponentially sweeter than the karamellpudding. I enjoyed the milder taste of this pudding because it was perfect when served with the syrupy caramel. The intent of the coating was interesting to me, it was made to be hard and brittle when it was prepared alone, but after cooking, it turned liquid once again. It worked well with the pudding, which did end up closely resembling flan, and the blueberries added a refreshing pop of sweetness alongside it.
