Sunday Scribblings #46 — Yummy

1. Very pleas­ing to the senses, esp. to the taste; deli­cious: The waiter brought out a tray of yummy desserts.
2. extremely attrac­tive or appealing
3. an item of food that is par­tic­u­larly deli­cious: The bak­ery win­dow was full of yummies.
4. any­thing that is extremely attrac­tive or appealing.

The word “yummy” evokes all sorts of images and mem­o­ries, doesn’t it? They include rec­ol­lec­tions of com­ing home from school in those wan­ing days before the hol­i­day break to find my mother bak­ing. There was noth­ing as won­der­ful as com­ing in from the cold after walk­ing home from school and open­ing the door to a warm, cozy house where the smell of fresh-baked peanut but­ter or choco­late chip cook­ies per­me­ated the air.

But the best-loved yum­mies were the Nor­we­gian delights.

At the top of my list of favorites is lefse, Nor­we­gian flat bread. We Nor­we­gians joke that lefse is to us as tor­tillas are to Mex­i­cans, and there is a lot of truth to that state­ment, as this pic­ture demonstrates.

Folks these days insist upon putting pota­toes in lefse and will argue with you that “it has always been made that way,” but I’m here to tell you that is not the case. My grand­mother was born in Nor­way in 1881 and emi­grated to the U.S. at the age of seven. Nei­ther she nor her mother, who had spent many years up on the fjords work­ing as a cook for farm crews, ever put a potato into their lefse. So my mother made it the way her mother and grand­mother did, sans pota­toes. Frankly, I’ll take it either way!

Note the ser­rated rolling pin. After the dough is pre­pared using lard, flour and water — plus the pota­toes, if you insist — it is rolled out and then baked on a lefse grid­dle. Most folks eat it with but­ter and some pre­serves. Yum! I grew up putting peanut but­ter and, some­times, grape jelly on mine.

And at Christ­mas, a lot of Nor­we­gians eat it but­tered with stinky cod called “lute­fisk.” (If you saw my photo and com­men­tary about the crab feed, how­ever, you know that I didn’t go near the lutefisk.)

Krumkakes, made from a sim­ple con­coc­tion of but­ter, eggs, vanilla extract and sugar, melt in your mouth. They require a spe­cial iron, shown here. The bat­ter is baked and then, while hot, the crepe-like result is rolled into a tube and allowed to cool. The result is a rich, crispy treat. Unlike in this photo, we ate them plain. Delicious!

I could not locate a photo of san­bakkels but, like krumkakes, the main ingre­di­ents are eggs, but­ter, sugar, and flour. How­ever, the dough is pressed into forms and then baked. They are also crispy and some­what sweet. The clos­est com­par­i­son I can come up with is short­bread cook­ies. A lot of folks fill their sun­bakkels with jams or jel­lies, but, again, we ate them plain.

Less often, my mother made fat­tig­man, pic­tured right. The dough is deep-fat fried and sprin­kled with pow­dered sugar. Very yummy indeed.

Finally, my mother also delighted us with rosettes from time to time. They are also deep-fat fried and sprin­kled with pow­dered sugar. Pic­tured here with krumkakes, you can see the shape which explains the name. Very pretty and fes­tive … also scrumptious.

The sad real­ity is that all of these yum­mies are, like so many really tasty foods, loaded with calo­ries and fat. They are also labor-intensive.

But if you enjoy cook­ing and want to sur­prise your fam­ily and friends with a dessert they have not tried before, recipes for all of them can be read­ily found on numer­ous web­sites. Just type the name of the yummy into your favorite search engine! You can also order lefse from a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ven­dors. Visit Terry’s Lefse Links for details. I rec­om­mend Lena’s.

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