Adventures in Norway: Norwegian food

I've now had a traditional Norwegian Christmas meal from the east and the west. In the west, they eat lamb ribs that have been salted and dried, then soaked in water to de-salt and puff up. The side dishes are boiled potatoes and mashed turnip-like roots. As bizarre as this sounds, it's actually rather tasty. The drying and re hydrating of the lamb makes it less greasy and very tender. The turnip-esque mash was actually pretty good too. This is traditionally served with a dark beer and a high- octane hard alcohol called aquavit.

Tonight we ate a traditional meal from eastern Norway; three different kinds of pork, boiled potatoes, sauerkraut and mustard sauce. God bless mustard, it's the only thing that got me through the meal.

The meal started off with bacon, or at least what I was told was bacon. In reality it was pig skin. Pig skin that was tough as concrete on one side and slime on the other side. It was so tough that I had to chew it well or I'm certain it would have sliced my esophagus open. I took a little more than a taste since I thought it was bacon, and bacon is yummy. Skin is one thing I can't eat. It turns my stomach to even think about people eating chicken skin, let alone watch people eat it. The other part of an animal I just can't stand is the fat. I can get through a small bit of beef-fat if I have to, everything else is a no-go. Now I have a rather large helping of pig skin I'm going to have to ingest. I can't just not eat it, the pig skin is considered to be the best part of this particular dish. Throwing it away would be terribly rude. I tried putting it in my mouth slimy side down, slimy side up, anything to make it more tolerable. I choked down as much as I could, trying to keep my face as neutral as possible. There was still more I'd have to eat, but I had to save it for later.

The next thing that came around was sauerkraut. I really hate sauerkraut, but not wanting to be rude I took a small helping. Little did I know this was the best food I'd be eating during the meal.

Next came the pork, or what I'm lead to believe was pork. It's called medister, and I can't find any explanation for it online. That might be for the best, somethings are better left unknown. All the pork was grey. There were fatty slabs of pork meat, pork cakes, and pork sausage. Mustard sauce also came around which I promptly drowned my food in. When I was cautioned it was quite strong, I made an "oops" face and then made a comment that I love mustard and must have gotten carried away. I didn't care how strong it was, I knew this was going to be one of the only things to help me through the meal.

The slabs of pork were marbled with fat, making it a bit of a challenge to eat. I just couldn't choke down any more fat. I carefully carved the lean meat out with my dull butter knife not really minding how long it was taking. After all, there was no other food I was looking forward to eating. The pork cake was acutally pretty tasty, or maybe it was just by comparison. I didn't mind it nearly as much as the meat slab.

Only three things left to finish on my plate: saurkraut, sausage and the skin. In a stroke of genious I mixed the mustard sauce in with the saurkraut and used the saurkraut to mask the skin. It actually worked, the mustard took the sting off the saurkraut and the saurkraut masked the taste and texture of the skin. I never thought I'd be thankful for saurkraut, but tonight it was my best friend.

One thing left, the sausage. Luckily sausages are relatively soft, so not much chewing is invovled. I powered through the sausage and drank long and hard from my wine glass. And don't forget, this was a meal with the extended family, so I also had to paste a smile on my face and make conversation.

I think I have PTSD from this meal, I'm mentally exhausted from eating it. I was fantasizing about the Hungarian stomach throughout this meal. I would have cried with joy for the ability to trade.

This is another of my favorite Norwegian foods. It's Reindeer sausage. I don't know why it's blueish purple, I've had reindeer steak and it certainly wasn't that color. Given that it's sausage it's probably best that I don't look too hard for an answer.

In Norway it's important to make sure "hest" isn't an ingredient in your sausage. "Hest" is horse meat and is a common sausage ingredient.

Strangely enough, the U.S. has one of the largest taboos against eating horse meat, yet the US has a fairly large horse meat export business.

This next picture is another common Norwegian breakfast/snack item. It's liver paste made from pig liver. It's actually pretty tasty. It has a very mild taste, and doesn't taste like pork at all. This is the first thing children eat on their bread here. They've even got a brand called "my first liver paste."