Norway is the Land of the Midnight Sun, Vikings, fish, happiness, and delicious potato flatbreads called lefse. Lefse taste like if mashed potatoes and homemade tortillas had a baby. They're very popular in the American midwest, a region of the country with many Norwegian immigrants. Scandinavian-Americans generally make and eat lefse to celebrate Christmas, but it's a delicious meal any time of the year. I made lefse to coincide with Norway's Constitution Day, a day of parades and celebration. It falls on May 17th, and part of the celebrations include "russ," aka graduating high school seniors who take to the streets to revel in the end of final exams and acceptance into higher education.
Back to the lefse. According to Wikipedia, lefse can be made with more than just potatoes as a base. While Mary Sue in North Dakota would only be referring to potato flatbreads as lefse, many Norwegians would make the distinction of potato lefse. I started my lefse by boiling russet potatoes.
Once the potatoes are fork-tender, traditionally one would use a potato ricer to mash them up without making them gummy. The end result is light and fluffy rather than dense. Since I don't have a potato ricer, I used the fine grating attachment for my food processor. Since the potatoes go through once rather than being continually mashed up, it worked pretty well as far as I could tell.
While hot, a good bit of butter is mixed in, then the entire thing goes into the fridge to chill over night. After chilling, the mixture is crumbly enough to break up with your hands.
And it's mixed with salt, sugar, heavy cream, and flour.
It's then kneaded like bread dough until a smooth dough forms. This was especially difficult with the potatoes being so cold, since I had to dig my hands in to smoosh everything together. I stopped several times just to rinse my hands in hot water so they wouldn't freeze. It's also a super heavy dough, being made primarily from potatoes.
The dough is then divided into 1/4 cup patties and left to rest for about 5 minutes while heating the skillet and flouring the surfaces and rolling pin.
The preparation for lefse includes a lot of extra flour. Since the dough is rolled out so thinly and they're so soft, you have to make sure the table is sufficiently floured so nothing sticks. Generally the sheets of dough measure 12 inches across, sometimes bigger. Since I only had a 10 inch skillet to cook them on, I went with about 8 or 9 inches.
Once they're rolled out, traditionally you would use a "lefse stick" to get under the sheet of dough and transfer it to the lefse pan to cook. I have a pair of bamboo tongs that happened to be almost exactly the same length as the diameter of the sheets.
Of course my first one was not the prettiest, having ripped in several places on the way from my kitchen table to the skillet. However, the brown spots on the first side look almost exactly how they should!
Subsequent lefse looked much better and held together for the most part. When you place the lefse in the pan, it should only cook for about 30 seconds before being flipped when the top is bubbly and soft brown spots form on the bottom. After flipping, it cooks for a little less than the other side since it's already heated through.
After they're all cooked, they can be folded into quarters and eaten warm. In the midwest, lefse are eaten with lots of butter and sugar. I wan't really feeling that option, so I simply served mine with some pickled veggies that are still pretty typically Scandinavian. I actually used the pickled onion recipe that I used for smorrebrod from Denmark. I included beets and green beans this time. We also ate them with some brown mustard.
The recipe I used made 20 of these bad boys, so I had leftovers for a couple of days. I tried them with a bit of jam and butter and they were just as good as the savory pickled veggie option. In Norway, they are sometimes eaten wrapped around lutefisk, another Norwegian delicacy, made from dried cod that's then soaked in lye and boiled down to a gelatinous consistency. Even if I ate fish I probably would not have attempted to make or even buy that for this project.
I also probably won't be making this recipe again, unless for a special occasion, since it's a major pain in the back and a minor headache. I can definitely see why most people only make and eat these around Christmas!
Recipes Used: Lefse
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