Syttende Mai Dinner: May 17, 2013

Good day friends and visitors!

I hope this post finds you well...

Today's post is going to be short because I have a lot to do and woke up late.

 

Last week for Syttende Mai,  I decided to cook the Farmer Boy and I a Norwegian meal.

Originally I had planned to make a wonderful bløtkake for dessert but that changed when I found out to my horror that my butter had expired:(

Sigh...

 

But, as it turned out, I was pretty busy between all the things I did cook and taking photos during the process. I should probably say here that these were taken with my smartphone, I didn't mess with the phone settings before I took them AND (this is the really important part) our kitchen lighting is really awful.

 

Well now that we're all on the same page and,

 we all understand that Aimee is NOT a food blogger and that these won't be great photos,

let's get started....

 

 

Oh my! I should have eaten breakfast before posting...now I am really HUNGRY!

This is kjøttkaker -- Norwegian meat cakes and they were fabulous:)

I ended up modifying the recipe I was following a bit--using 1/2# each of ground beef and veal (no, you don't have to use veal if you are morally opposed to doing so) and 1# of ground pork. I also omitted the cloves--mostly because I just had whole cloves and was short on time.

I did cook the gravy, substituting lingonberry preserves for the red currant jam and I liked it, but I liked it even more the next day...I personally LOVE gjetost cheese and lingonberries but my hubby is not fond of either so he ate his sans gravy and liked them very much.

 

Also on the menu was pickled herring (YUM), agurksalat (ditto the YUM),

boiled Yukon potatoes and green peas. Next time I will try to cook the peas Norwegian style;

next time I will have butter on hand that is NOT expired:) Sigh.

 

 

Making the agurksalat...I've actually made a Swedish version of this for decades

(yep, literally decades). Yum...

This was my first time to use an English cucumber for this salad so that was pretty neat too.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the kjøttkaker--

this was after all the meats were mixed together and the spices were added.

And this was when the fragrance of those spices made me believe that I was in heaven...

yes, they smelled THAT great!

 

 

And then this was after the onion, panko (LOVE this stuff now) and egg was added...

after which came kneading and mixing, kneading and mixing...

and then the FUN part of forming the little meat cakes!

I decided to make them look like slightly flattened eggs...

loved it:)

 

 

And then came the cooking.

I used the last, itty bitty portion of my good, not expired butter and a bit of cooking spray.

This photo reminds me

#1) I SO need to clean my stovetop,

#2) I'm really starving now

and

most importantly

#3) I again have GOOD BUTTER!

 

So as gray skies replace the earlier mix of blue and clouds,

I bid you goodbye...

 

Blessings,

Aimee

 

Notes:

The recipe I followed for the cucumber salad was similar to this one:

http://www.sofn.com/norwegian_culture/showRecipe.jsp?document=CucumberSalad.html

 

For the meat cakes I mostly followed this first recipe but also used the second one for a guide:

http://arcticgrub.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/kjottkaker-a-rival-to-swedish-meatballs/

and...

http://www.gooseberrymooseberry.com/2012/05/norwegian-meatballs-and-syttende-mai.html

 

And now breakfast...

and then to finalize my menu for my clan's special day.

Mmm...Scottish food:)