Friday, February 01, 2008

Lefse anyone?

Well, I was supposed to do my Week 3 check-in, but I think I'm going to drop out at this point. I'm so far behind, and I just am not into it. I was doing well with the morning pages, then my thumb started giving me grief. I moved on to morning pages on the computer, but it just wasn't the same, and I gave them up, and found more reasons for not doing the reading and exercises. With very intermittent internet connection, I've also been doing other things to fill my time.
When I married my husband I became exposed to a different food heritage, Norwegian, which included krumkake and lefse. Since I love to cook, I quickly adopted these things in my repertoire. Lefse is a very much like a potato dough tortilla.
I adapted my recipe this year, and substituted the half and half in the recipe with soy milk for my lactose intolerant husband, and I'm happy to report it was a success. It's a time consuming process which starts the day before with cooking the potatoes, ricing them, and mixing with the liquid ingredients. This sits overnight in the refrigerator, and the next day you can start rolling out the dough, and cooking on the griddle. The rolling pin is ridged and covered with a stockinette. There is also a lefse stick which you run under the rolled out circle of dough, and transfer it to the griddle. Since I make them thin and the dough is rather fragile, at this point the lefse can break and fall apart on the griddle.
I make it a point of eating many of these imperfect ones (sparing my family) warm off the griddle with a little butter.

I've never tried lefse's companion, lutefisk, but I think it's an acquired taste, and since my husband's family didn't eat it, it's not likely to make an appearance at our table. Occasionally the lefse comes out just perfect like this one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I made it to your site!! (I thought I better add "site", so you wouldn't think I made lefse). Love your header pic. Have you ever made jelly from catus??