Anyone having lutefisk during the holidays?

Jinglebob

Jinglebob

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When I was growing up my mother made lutefisk to celebrate the Christmas holidays. Lutefisk dinners during the Advent season are a Norwegian practice dating back to the Middle Ages.

Mom served lutefisk with boiled potatoes, white sauce and melted butter, turkey and cornbread dressing, green beans, homemade bread, cranberry sauce and homemade pies.

I still have Mom’s recipe and I’m thinking about making my own lutefisk this holiday season. It’s been decades since I’ve eaten lutefisk and I remember it being quite good. The recipe calls for dried codfish, reconstituted with lye, rinsed in clean water and boiled in salt water. The result is firm and flaky lutefisk: codfish (fisk) preserved in lye (lut).

Before you gasp, lye is used in preparing foods other than lutefisk. Lye is what gives pretzels their color, texture and flavor. Lye is also used in making homily, the curing of olives and the canning of mandarin oranges. The lye used is food grade or USP grade only – the hardware store cans of lye most certainly contain other chemicals.
 
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My Grandfather was 100% pure Norwegian and hated it because it not only stunk
stock-photo-group-of-six-people-holding-their-noses-bad-smells-in-the-air-53582633.jpg

but ive smelled it cooking and to me, it smelled like:
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l.jpg
 
Ya, you betcha. This time of year, from mid-October up until Christmas is church-basement lutefisk season in Minnesota and NW Wisconsin. Beldenville, Star Prairie, Marine-on-St.-Croix, the Tabor Church down by Maiden Rock, all have lutefisk dinners, all you can eat. My favorite is at West Immanuel, up by Star Prairie:
The mashed rutabaga puts their dinner a bit above the rest. That and some purty good fisk:
lutefisk.jpg

Mashed potato, rutabaga, meatballs, cranberry sauce, fisk, slaw, lefse and a roll. for dessert, rommegrot, krumkake and pie.

Our motorbikes are pretty much put away for the season, except those that are going to Mexico, so this is how we fill up some of the slow evenings during this season when we are still adjusting to the harsh reality of life in a Northern clime.

Then of course, you can't forget the german sausage dinner at St. Mary's in New Trier, with sauerkraut and german potato salad. This year they added a new wrinkle, sliced beets; not for everyone, but well-regarded among the cognoscenti.
 
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Well, I've eaten some strange **** before and I will always try something since there is a fairly good chance I might like it-and by not trying something just because is sounds nasty means one will not eat some truly great things. Lutefisk may or may not be one of those treats but I will withold judgement until I actually try some.
Some if the strange stuff (food) I have eaten and actually liked:
Boudin rouge (blood boudin)
Raw Oysters
Haggis
Raw fish
Steak Tartare
Liederkrantz cheese
Stewed Chicken gizzards, smothered liver
Rabbit,Squirrel,Deer,Goat,nutria,

Strange food I have eaten and NOT liked

Seagull (don't ask :rolleyes:)
Possum, Raccoon
By-catch stew (anybody that has dealt with Vietnamese shrimpers knows what this is).
Armadillo (again don't ask but it also involved mescal, a large fire and three drunk Mexican ranch hands at some ranch in south Texas after a long ago dove hunt. Money changed hands ;)).

So in other words-I'll try just about anything at least once.
 
I lived in Norway for about 3 years during what seems now a previous incarnation. I tried several times but could never eat that rotten fish. I did however like the dried lamb (fenelot?)
 
haven't had any lutefisk since my wifes grandmother passed...I liked it but she didn't and she won't make any...I could go to Ballard (a fishing town in Seattle) but it is 40 miles away....I don't need it that bad....lol
 
CAJUNLAWYER said:
Well, I've eaten some strange **** before and I will always try something since there is a fairly good chance I might like it-and by not trying something just because is sounds nasty means one will not eat some truly great things. Lutefisk may or may not be one of those treats but I will withold judgement until I actually try some.
Some if the strange stuff (food) I have eaten and actually liked:
Boudin rouge (blood boudin)
Raw Oysters
Haggis
Raw fish
Steak Tartare
Liederkrantz cheese
Stewed Chicken gizzards, smothered liver
Rabbit,Squirrel,Deer,Goat,nutria,

Strange food I have eaten and NOT liked

Seagull (don't ask :rolleyes:)
Possum, Raccoon
By-catch stew (anybody that has dealt with Vietnamese shrimpers knows what this is).
Armadillo (again don't ask but it also involved mescal, a large fire and three drunk Mexican ranch hands at some ranch in south Texas after a long ago dove hunt. Money changed hands ;)).

So in other words-I'll try just about anything at least once.
Click to expand...

Since you're a somewhat ballzee gourmand, Caj:
Perhaps a peck or so of mountain oysters would be in order, then.:D I wouldn't recommend 'em raw, though.
 
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I worked with a woman of Norwegian ancestry and she brought some to work one day. I had never seen or tasted this strange food so I gave it a try. It was about the worst thing I ever put into my mouth! Right on a par with Scottish haggis, another ethnic "delicacy" I once, out of politeness, agreed to try. I guess that all of these special foods are ones that you need to start eating when you are very, very young and then they have special nostalgic meaning for you.
 
My grandad came from Norway so in our family it was very traditional. After he passed, my mother took over the job and now that she's passed, we've gone over to the other side. Nothing but Swedish meatballs for us!
Well, we still have lefse, krumkake and all the rest just not the fish.

A lady in our church who turns 100 after the first of the year also came from Norway and a few years back some of her relatives came over for a visit. I asked her if she cooked them up a big batch of lutefisk and she said they're response to that was, "You mean you really eat that stuff??" I guess even the natives have abondoned tradition.
 
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