abravo
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response 94 of 109:
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Jun 15 21:12 UTC 2002 |
This unusally long post about Norway & lutefisk:
I couldn't imagine that my #67 post about my location will bring
questions about some aspects of the norwegian culture, and about, god!,
LUTEFISK...
RE: #93 lutefisk is a food. Etym= washed fish.So easy.
The reason: dryed fish is one of the easiest way to preserve
fish , but you end with something that is hard as wood and just good to
chew along with some beer or some spirit. ( spend time in a pub in
north Norway, in Lofoten or Tromso...). So to make a meal with dryed
fisk you need to rehydrate and tenderize the thing.Thus you just bath it
with caustic soda.And you get a kind of jelly...flop-flop...The guy who
had the idea is a genius...;-)
Well, here follow to texts.Just the second is important: THE RECIPE,
taken from a norwegian cookbook.
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(NB1: I'm not norwegian myself, but I'm acquainted to Norway.At one
moment in my life I was fisk factory worker in the Lofoten/Bodo/Narvik
area, and learnt , among other things, the lute'ing process.)
(NB2: the summum in norwegian food is certainly: GRAVFISK)
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From: clays@panix.com (Clay Shirky)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Ode to Lutefisk (Long)
Date: Sun, 04 Dec 1994 09:11:19 -0500
It is my wont when travelling to forgo the touristic in favor of the
real, to pesuade my kind hosts, whoever they may be, that an evening in
the local, imbibing pints of whatever the natives use as intoxicants,
would be more interesting than another
espresso in another place called Cafe Opera. Chiefest among my
interests is the Favorite Dish: the plate, cup, or bowl of whatever
stuff my hosts consider most representative of the regions virtues. As I
just finished a week's work in Oslo, this dish
was of course lutefisk.
(snd f/x: organ music in minor key - cresc. and out.)
The Norwegians are remarkably single-minded in their attachment to the
stuff. Every one of them would launch themselves into a hydrophobic
frenzy of praise on the mere mention of the word. Though these
panegyrics were as varied as they were fulsome,
they shared one element in common. Every testimonial to the recondite
deliciousness of cod soaked in lye ended with the phrase "...but I only
eat it once a year."
When I pressed my hosts as to _why_ they would voluntarily forswear
what was by all accounts the tastiest fish dish since pussy 364 days a
year, each of them said "Oh, you can't eat lutefisk more than once a
year." (Their unanmity on this particular
point carried with it the same finality as the answers you get when
casually asking a Scientologist about L. Ron's untimely demise.)
Despite my misgivings from these interlocutions however, there was
nothing for it but to actually try the stuff, as it was clearly the
local delicacy. A plan was hatched whereby my hosts and I would distill
ourselves to a nearby brasserie, and I would
order something tame like reindeer steak, and they would order
lutefisk. The portions at this particular establishment were large, they
assured me, and when I discovered for myself how scrumptious jellied
fish tasted, I could have an adequate amount
from each of their plates to satiate my taste for this new-found treat.
Ah, but the best laid plans... My hostess, clearly feeling in a
holiday mood (and perhaps further cheered by my immanent departure as
their house guest) proceeded to order lutefisks all round.
"But I was going to order reinde..."
"Nonononono," she said, "you must have your own lutefisk. It would be
rude to bring you to Norway and not give you your own lutefisk."
My mumbled suggestion that I had never been one to stand on formality
went unnoticed, and moments later, somewhere in the kitchen, there was a
lutefisk with my name on it.
The waitress, having conveyed this order to the chef, returned with a
bottle and three shot glasses and spent some time interogating my host.
He laughed as she left, and I asked what she said.
"Oh she said 'Is the American _really_ going to eat lutefisk?' and
when I told her you were, she said that it takes some time to get used
to it."
"How long?" I asked.
"Well, she said a couple of years." replied my host.
In the meantime, my hostess was busily decanting a clear liquid into
the shot glass and passing it my way. When I learned that it was
aquavit, I demurred, as I intended to get some writing done on the train.
"Oh no," said my hostess, donning the smile polite people use when
giving an order, "you _must_ have aquavit with lutefisk."
To understand the relationship between aquavit and lutefisk, here's an
experiment you can do at home. In addition to aquavit, you will need a
slice of lemon, a cracker, a dishtowel, ketchup, a piece of lettuce,
some caviar, and a Kit-Kat candy bar.
1. Take a shot aquavit.
2. Take two. (They're small.)
3. Put a bit of caviar on a bit of lettuce.
4. Put the lettuce on a cracker.
5. Squeeze some lemon juice on the caviar.
6. Pour some ketchup on the Kit-Kat bar.
7. Tie the dishtowel around your eyes.
If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and
ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit
to be ready for lutefisk. Return to step one.
The first real sign of trouble was when a plate arrived and was set in
front of my host, sitting to my left. It contained a collection of dark
and aromatic food stuffs of a variety of textures. Having steeled myself
for an encounter with a pale jelly,
I was puzzled at its appearance, and I leaned over to get a better look.
"Oh," said my host, "that's not lutefisk. I changed my mind and
ordered the juletid plate. Its is pork and sausages."
"But you're leaving for New York tomorrow, so tonight is your last
chance to have lutefisk this year" I pointed out.
"Oh well," he said, tucking into what looked like a very tasty pork chop.
Shortly thereafter the two remaining plates arrived, each containing
the lutefisk itself, boiled potatoes, and a mash of peas from which all
the color had been expertly tortured. There was also a garnish of a
slice of cucumber, a wedge of lemon, and a
sliver of red pepper.
"This is bullshit!" said my hostess, snatching the garnish off her plate.
"What's wrong," I asked, "not enough lemon?"
"No, a plate of lutefisk should be totally gray!"
Indeed, with the removal of the garnish, it was totally gray, and
waiting for me to dig in. There being no time like the present, I tore a
forkful away from the cod carcass and lifted it to my mouth.
"Wait," said my host, "you can't eat it like that!"
"OK," I said, "how should I eat it?"
"Mash up your potatoes, and then mix a bit of lutefisk in, and then
add some bacon." he said, handing me a tureen filled to the brim with
bacon bits floating in fat.
I began to strain some of the bits out of the tureen. "No, not like
that, like this" he said, snatching up the tureen and pouring three
fingers of pure bacon grease directly over the beige mush I had made
from the potatoes and lutefisk already on my
plate.
"Now can I eat it?"
"No, not yet, you have to mix in the mustard."
"And the pepper" added my hostess, "you have to have lutefisk with
lots and lots of pepper. And then you have to eat it right away, because
if it gets cold its horrible."
They proceeded to add pepper and mustard in amounts I felt were more
apporpriate to ingredients rather than flavors, but no matter. At this
point what I had was an undercooked hash brown with mustard on it,
flavored with a little bit of lutefisk. "How
bad could it be?" I thought to myself as I lifted my fork to my mouth.
The moment every traveller lives for is the native dinner where,
throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy which
ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is not only
delicious but that it also contradicts a
previously held prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary
horizons to include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures.
Lutefisk is not such a dish.
Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you'd expect of jellied cod; it
is a foul and odiferous goo, whose gelatinous texture and rancid oily
taste are locked in spirited competition to see which can be the more
responsible for rendering the whole
completely inedble.
How to describe that first bite? Its a bit like describing passing a
kidneystone to the uninitiated. If you are talking to someone else who
has lived through the experience, a nod will suffice to acknowledge your
shared pain, but to explain it to the
person who has not been there, mere words seem inadequate to the task.
So it is with lutefisk. One could bandy about the time honored phrases
like "nauseating sordid gunk", "unimaginably horrific", "lasting
psychological damage", but these seem hollow
when applied to the task at hand. I will have to resort to a recipe
for a kind of metaphorical lutefisk, to describe the experience. Take
marshmallows made without sugar, blend them together with overcooked
Japanese noodles, and then bathe the whole
liberally in acetone. Let it marinate in cod liver oil for several
days at room temprature. When it has achieved the appropriate
consistency (though the word "appropriate" is somewhat problematic
here), heat it to just above lukewarm, sprinkle in
thousands of tiny, sharp, invisible fish bones, and serve.
The waitress, returning to clear our plates, surveyed the half-eaten
goo I had left.
She nodded conspiritorially at me, said something to my host, and left.
"What'd she say?, I asked.
"Oh, she said 'I never eat lutefisk either. It tastes like python.'"
Clay "I think my mistake was in using the dishtowel: you need to drink
enough aquavit so you can't tell the difference between caviar on a
cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat with your eyes open" Shirky
http://www.urbanlegends.com/
Copyright Information
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############# THE RECIPE ################
Lutefisk from scratch
feeds 10 people
time needed: about 2 weeks
Ingredients:
1 kg dried fish
100 g caustic soda
30 liters of water
Saw the fish in suitably sized pieces or leave it whole. Put in water.
Leave in water in a cool
place for 5-6 days if cut in pieces, 8 days if the fish is whole. Change
the water every day.
For the luting use a plastic or stainless steel or enamelled tub (the
enamel must be
unchipped). Wooden vessels, china or stoneware may also be used.
Place the fish in the tub with the skin side up. Dissolve caustic soda
in the water, pour over
the fish until covered complete by lut water. Leave the fish in a cold
place for 3-4 days.
When the fish is completely luted, it will be well swollen and you
should be able to put a
finger through it. Rinse the fish and leave in cold water 4-6 days.
Change water every day.
If the fish stays in water for too long after the luting, it may be
soft and difficult to boil.
Test boil a piece, if you are uncertain.
Do not make lutefisk in the warm season.
1 kg dry fish makes about 5 kg lutefisk.
(Cappelens Kokebok, Ed.: Aase Stromstad, Oslo 1968)
"Expecting Lutefisk" http://bob.nbr.no
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Bon appetit !
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