[Sca-cooks] Lefse .... help me, please

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Here's Elisabeth Luard's Swedish lompe recipe, from a favorite  
cookbook of mine, which is nearly identical to the lefse made by the  
mother of a good SCAdian friend, whose family is of Norwegian  
ancestry. The only difference is that they use the flour for dusting,  
and it gets incorporated into the dough that way. Mixing it in is  
probably thought to be cheating. However:

> 2 lb (6 medium sized) old
>
> -potatoes (the older, the -better)
> 1 tb Salt
> 1/4 lb (1 cup) flour
>
> This excellent soft pancake wrapper, easily made at home, is eaten  
> in Norway with butter and 'geitost' cheese, or used to wrap  
> delicious little morsels of smoked ham, 'fenalar', dried and salted  
> leg of mutton, or a spoonful of berry conserve.
>
> You will need a griddle or a heavy frying pan, or best of all, a  
> 'takke'. Boil the potatoes in their skins. Peel them as soon as  
> they are cool enough to handle and immediately mash them with the  
> salt. Speed makes light pancakes. Mix with the flour into a dough.  
> (Less or more flour may be needed - potatoes are very variable. The  
> less flour you use, the better.) Form into a long sausage and chop  
> of lengths. Roll these pieces out into pancakes about 1/8 inch thick.
>
> Bake the 'lompe' on a hot iron surface.
>
> Yield: Makes 10 to 12 small pancakes Time: 1 hour
>
> From: "The Old World Kitchen - The Rich Tradition of European  
> Peasant Cooking" by Elisabeth Luard, ISBN 0-553-05219-5 Posted by:  
> Karin Brewer, Cooking Echo, 7/92

The other difference is that the potato lefse I've seen are quite  
large, maybe 15 inches across. You'd probably want to double, or  
maybe even triple, the recipe.

Ateno's family eats these with Swedish meatballs, lutefisk (which for  
Alaskan Norwegians appears to be made from fresh cod, not  
reconstituted dried), and butter with cloudberry or lingonberry jam,  
sometimes even cranberry sauce.

He also has a dedicated Norwegian lefse griddle (I think it's called  
a takke), a ridged lefse rolling pin, and a long wooden spatula,  
basically a wooden lath sharpened on one edge, to turn the lefse...

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04