Nordic Heritage Cooking, Fattigman and Lefse

 

Fattigman, translated from Norwegian as "Poor man's  cakes", are traditional Nordic "cookies" that are in fact deep fried cardamom flavored dough. 

Cut in strips, then slit, with the tail threaded through the slit, then resemble buckles. 

 Then they are deep fried, cooled, and coated with powdered sugar. 

It's a team effort, with Irene rolling out the springy dough, taking over my traditional job, me cutting the strips, Irene slitting and twisting, and Isaac frying. Tom did the sugaring. We all sampled.

This was the first part of our two projects in Nordic Heritage cooking today. Lefse was the next. 

I made the mashed potatoes, rich in butter and whole milk, yesterday, so they could chill over night in the refrigerator. Today I added enough flour to make the potatoes into dough. I don't like to add more flour that necessary, which does tend to make the dough soft and prone to sticking. Lots of flour is involved in the process. 

I was back to rolling out the dough this year. 

Irene is quite attached to her lefse stick and didn't want to change jobs so she manned the griddle/lefse iron. 

Isaac tried his hand at rolling out, but it takes a light touch with my sticky dough. He had some trouble, but persisted through several rounds. 

Then I assigned Isaac to preparing some samples as we finished the job.

The lefse is coated with melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, cut in wedges, and rolled up.

It's the last one!

Flour everywhere. Then we called in Grampa for clean up duty. We all sampled lefse.

I didn't know if I would be up to this, but I had a great time with my grands, and they did too. And out fattigmand are crispy and flavorful and our lefse are soft and yummy. 

It was a great afternoon of heritage cooking.