Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
dish is traditional Norwegian meatballs served with mushy peas, mashed potatoes and
wild-berry jam.
Roots web (
www.rootsweb.com/
~wgnorway/recipe.html) has easy-to-follow recipes of tra-
ditional Norwegian foods passed down through generations of people of Norwegian des-
cent.
Seafood
One Norwegian contribution to international cuisine that you shouldn't miss is salmon
(grilled,
laks;
or smoked,
røykelaks
). Whereas other Norwegian foods may quickly empty
your wallet without adequate compensation for taste, salmon remains blissfully cheap, al-
though this applies only to farmed salmon; wild salmon is considerably more expensive.
The quality is consistently top-notch. An excellent salmon dish,
gravat laks
is made by
marinating salmon in sugar, salt, brandy and dill, and serving it in a creamy sauce.
Other Norwegian freshwater seafood specialities include brown trout, perch, Arctic
char, Arctic grayling, bream and eel.
The most common ocean fish and seafood that you're likely to eat are cod (
torsk
or
bacalao;
often dried) and boiled or fresh shrimp. Herring (once the fish of the poor masses
and now served pickled in onions, mustard or tomato sauce) is still served in some places,
but it's becoming rarer as wild stocks recover. Norwegians are also huge fans of
fiskesuppe,
a thin, creamy, fish-flavoured soup.
Other dishes to watch out for include
fiskebolle
(fish balls),
fiskegrateng
(fish casser-
ole),
gaffelbitar
(salt- and sugar-cured sprat/herring fillets),
klippfisk
(salted and dried
cod),
sildesalat
(salad with slices of herring, cucumber, onions etc) and
spekeslid
(salted
herring, often served with pickled beetroot, potatoes and cabbage).
Norwegian National Recipes: An Inspiring Journey in the Culinary History of Norway
by
Arne Brimi can be hard to track down, but there's no finer study of Norwegian food cover-
ing all regions, and it's written by one of Norway's premier chefs.
