DOUBLE INDIGO 666 WORLD TOUR
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Roll on the weekend. I teach an Advanced English class last period which is a challenge to my motivational skills. Got them working now though.
Great thing about teaching in Norway: jeans are acceptable professional attire. Double, double indigo today with the tour jeans and the auctioned sample herringbone IHV-02.
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You always been a teacher mate? Or was it something you started when you moved there?
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As I said earlier, this time of the year is not the most exciting to be having the tour jeans. So today I'm going to do something deeply boring and live blog a family advent tradition.
Advent is a big thing in Norway. Probably because the weather is often so shite that you need to do something nice to take your mind of the interminable misery of the constant cold, wet darkness.
So "kos" the Norwegian version of the Danish "hygge" is important. In my family we make traditional xmas food every Sunday in advent. This is kos.
When I moved here one of the most interesting/fun/downright terrifying things was tasting all the Norwegian seasonal specialities. No season is more terrifying than xmas. Traditional Norwegian food is nearly always formed by different curing or preserving techniques, originally developed to get food produced in the short summer to last through the long winter. Cod and Coley, the two main salt water fish get preserved in all sorts of ways, the most famous (but amazingly not the most disgusting) being to bury it, covered in lye (naturally occurring caustic soda) for three months before digging it up, washing it off and steaming it. This is "lutefisk". It's rough as a tramp's bunghole, but like everything else in life you get used to it. I'm not making that today. I'm making "pinnekjøtt", which roughly translates as "stick meat". I kid you not.
Pinnekjøtt is strips of lamb rib from the early autumn slaughter that has been smoked, salted, and dried for a couple of months. It looks like this:
I started yesterday by soaking the meat for 24hrs. This is to rehydrate the meat and remove some of the salt. I changed the water twice. The "stick" part comes from the tradition of using birch sticks as a grill on which you place the meat:
You then pour in water up to the level of the sticks, place the lamb on top and steam it on a low temp for 3 hours). Here it is a couple of hours in:
That red colour in the meat is a result of the mental amounts of salt plus the smoking.
I've also baked "boller" this morning. Simple sweetbreads that turn awesome when filled with whipped cream and jam.
I need beer now.
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Part two… the gorging.
Here's the plated up meal. Traditional sides are smoked sausage, puréed root veg, potatoes and pickled cabbage.
It's not pretty but it tastes great. The best deal… not only is it acceptable, it's actually required to drink hard liquor and beer as an accompaniment. Akevitt and xmas beer:
And now, this:
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My Minnesotan brother tried to get me to sample lutefisk. No.
