Conference turris::scandia

    Group soc.culture.nordic

    From: [email protected] (Robert Martensen)
    Subject: Re: What was that food?
    Organization: TeleLOGIC Uppsala AB

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Lyle Davis) writes:
...
> His brother, Kristen, had spent several days preparing
> some type of food for us.  I can best describe it as "clabbered milk"...
> Anyone have any idea what it was we ate?

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Peter Frenning)
writes:
...
> produce "tykm�lk" litterally "thick milk" by setting some milk aside
> uncovered in room temperature. The process is a form of infestation with
> a bacteria causing the milk to become sour and thus thicken.
>   IT'S DELICIOUS!!!!!!
> I'm just sorry that it's impossible to make with modern 'safe' milk. Youghurt
> doesn't even come close.

And Hans Henrik Eriksen writes:

>I think you must be referring to what Norwegians call "Melkerand" or
>"Roemmekolle". It is made from ordinary milk and what we call "Kulturmelk",
>which is almost like the turkish "Kefir". It works even with our homogenized
>and pasteurized milk! To make the "Melkerand" richer, you can substitute
>cream for some of the milk and sour cream ("Roemme") for the "Kulturmelk".
>"Roemme" is bacteria-soured cream and is (I think) a Scandinavian specialty.
>At least, it is not commonly used on the european continent.

>I have tried "Melkerand" once and I didn't like it particularly. I guess
>it tastes better if you scoop sugar on it and eat it with apple jam:-)

>And for those of you wanting to try it out for yourself
>(this is for four persons):
>Heat 1 liter of ordinary milk to 25 deg. Celsius (just above room temerature)
>and add 0.1-0.2 liters of "Kefir" equivalent. Pour into 4 serving bowls
>and put them aside for at least 24 hours at about 18 deg. Celsius (just below
>room temperature...) The bowls should be covered with a piece of cloth,
>allowing the substance to "breathe". Serve with sweet scone crums, sugar
>and your favorite jam.

>Sorry about the metrics, but I can't seem to find my conversion tables :-)

>                                       Hans Henrik Eriksen ([email protected])
>                                       Dept. of Informatics,
>                                       University of Oslo

    Of all impossible tasks!... In my not very eventful life I have still 
    encountered at least a dozen different sorts of scandinavian type
    "thick milk". Most of them slow running and sour, some not thick at all
    but still sour and some thick and sweet. Most of them white but at
    least one yellowish brown. All of them made in their own stupid way. A
    couple of Swedish examples:

Filmj�lk:       "Standard" sour milk in Sweden. Thick and sour.
L�ngmj�lk:      Thick and sour. In fact very thick (and a bit slimy), you
                can make "strings" and cut with a knife if it is a good
                "batch".
K�rnmj�lk:      Thin, slightly sour and "fresh". This is what you have left
                when you have made butter. [buttermilk]
xxxxx:          Thick as a pudding. Brownish and somewhat sweet. Made by
                mixing milk with a little from the stomage of a slaugtered
                cow and store it a few days if I remember properly.

    Unfortunately I have forgotten all the funny variants and all reciepts.
    It is a very traditional kind of food here. There are lots of variants,
    especially desserts like the last one, but they are rapidly dying out
    as nobody makes butter or kills cows themself nowadays.

    Perhaps Lyle could give a more detailed description of his "clabbered
    milk".

    Yours Robban

Real life:      Robert Martensson               Email:  robert@uplog.{se,uucp}
Snail mail:     TeleLOGIC Uppsala AB            Phone:  +46 18 189441
                Box 1218                        Fax:    +46 18 132039
                S - 751 42 Uppsala, Sweden

From: [email protected] (Thomas Kalla)
Subject: Re: What was that food?
Organization: TeleLOGIC AB, Lulea, Sweden

      Just want to make a small correction...

      The very thick kind of processed sour milk that you refer
      to as 'L�ngmj�lk' is actually called 'L�ngfil'. This 'L�ngfil'
      is a special favourite among us up here in the north of
      Sweden. Mmmm... :-)                                           

    Group soc.culture.nordic

    From: [email protected] (Erik Karlsson)
    Subject: Re: What was that food?
    Organization: TeleLOGIC AB, Lulea, Sweden

    So, you see, even in the same country there might be several words for
    the same thing.

    Take the word "palt"; in Gothenburgh they have hardly ever heard the
    word, in G�vle they mean a round piece of bread, with blood from cows
    as one of the ingredients, that you boil before eating it, and serve
    with white sauce and bacon, or fried pork meat. And in Pite} they mean
    a dish in the shape of a ball, mostly containing potatoes and flour,
    stuffed with pork meat, and boiled for about one hour, and served with
    cowberry (sw. lingon) jam and melted butter. This proves that there
    might be one word describing different things in different parts of the
    same country, and I think food is specially exposed to this phenomena.

--Erik K.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
! ---------     Erik Karlsson           Phone: (0920)754 22               
! TeleLOGIC     TeleLOGIC AB            Int. : +46920 754 22
! =========     S-951 75  LULE�         Fax. : +46920 754 90
!               SWEDEN                  Mail : [email protected]                

    Group soc.culture.nordic

    From: [email protected] (Hans Henrik Eriksen)

    Roemmegroet (sour cream porridge):

    1/2 liter HIGH FAT sour cream (can you spell CHOLESTEROL??),
    0.2 liter flour(wheat), 0.5-0.6 liter milk and 3/4-1 tsp salt.

    Heat the sour cream and make it boil for 10 minutes. Add half of the
    flour. Stir until the fat from the sour cream comes to the surface.
    Remove any unwanted fat, but keep it hot for later. Boil for 10 more
    minutes, stir occasionally. Add the preheated milk and some of the
    flour so that it will have your favorite porridge consistence. Add salt
    to taste. Serve with (sour cream) fat, sugar and cinnamon and berry
    juice or milk to drink. Enjoy!(?) :-) 
    
    Hans Henrik Eriksen ([email protected]) 
    Dept. of Informatics University of Oslo                  

From: [email protected] (a.e.mossberg)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: Sweden? Ah yes, cheese and clocks!
Date: 31 Dec 89 22:30:25 GMT

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Merri Naka) wri
|tes:
>I have no idea about Swedish clocks, but I have to say that
>Switzerland is not the only place that makes great cheese...
>The cheese and bread in Sweden were EXCELLENT!!  The only
>problem is, how do we get them here?

Bond�st is my second favorite cheese (with caraway, of course) (exceeded
only by my love of Manchego Viejo from Spain).

Every year we order several wheels of Bond�st from New York (Jamestown).

Burdines (a florida-wide department store) usually had it in its gourmet
deli area, but at a high price.
    ___________________________________________________________________________
     
From: [email protected] (Jan Michael Rynning)
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Date: 31 Dec 89 22:45:10 GMT

Sweden produces a large assortment of excellent hard cheese.  I like the
ripe ones best:  W{sterbotten, Greve, Kvibille Special Cheddar, to name a
few.  It's a pity we don't export more of them.  I mean, it's a pity for
you...

Swedish bread, well, it's certainly a lot better than the English-style
white bread with no flavour at all, which seems to be so popular in the
U.S., but it's not my favourite.  Traditionally, Sweden has three main
types of bread:  white bread, which does have some flavour but not much,
rye bread, mostly sweet, with raisins, and flavoured with brewer's wort,
and crispbread.  Recently, whole-meal bread has become popular, mainly
due to immigrants who won't put up with the traditional Swedish bread.
Unfortunately, the Swedish whole-meal bread is not by far as good as the
Norwegian, so when I'm in Sweden I hardly eat anything but crispbread,
but every time I go to Norway I eat lots of whole-meal bread.
    _______________________________________________________________________
    
From: [email protected] (Erik Karlsson)
Organization: TeleLOGIC AB, Lulea, Sweden
Date: 2 Jan 90 10:17:54 GMT

        But what do the Swedish farmers do? They produce too much milk,
        and they hardly export anything at all. I really wish someone
        would do something about all this. A good way to take care of
        the milk would be to make cheese out of it, and export it.
        It's easy to ship it, and since the quality is fine, there
        really shouldn't be any problems making a good profit out of it.

        If this would have been done, perhaps the subsidizing of the
        Swedish milk could be removed.

        BTW: Did you know that 1 liter (2 pints) of milk costs SEK 5:00 -
        5:50 (I'm not quite sure, since I hardly ever buy any myself) and
        that it's subsidized with about SEK 2:00, by our governement. The
        correct amount should therefore be at least SEK 7:00. The VAT that
        we pay is somewhere around 23% and if we remove that from SEK 7:00
        what do we get? Well... SEK 5.69. I love Sweden, but I hate the
        taxes! What happens with the money that we pay to reduce the price
        of our milk? Nothing! It pays the salary of a non-producing tax-
        bureaucrat! I don't want to pay him anything, I want to pay the
        farmer, and his organization!
 

    From: [email protected] (David L. Golber)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Date: 19 Jun 90 22:25:09 GMT
    Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
 
    >>>My grandfather has a whole ritual involving the same menu every day for
    >>>lunch:
    >>>
    >>>      1) Herring with (rodbeter)
    >>>      2) Gamalost in double sandwich
    >>>      3) Blueberry jam
    >>>
   >[...]
   >>        I like your father and grandfather already.  Have captured your
   >>message and fully intend on observing both father and grandfather's ritual.
   >>Will report back to you (in triplicate) on the results.  (However. . .to
   >>observe the ritual I need a little help.  What is "rodbeter", what is
   >>"gamalost", what is "geitost"?)
 
    Heavens to Murgatroyd, Lyle!  This is non-survival behavior in the
    extreme!  "Sounds great!  I'll have two helpings! (Oh, by the way, what
    is it?)"  Remember those Icelanders talking about eating rotten shark?
 
    Gamalost is cheese.  Smelly cheese.  Very smelly cheese. VERY SMELLY
    CHEESE.  VERY VERY SMELLY CHEESE.  (Get the idea?)
 
   >Geitost is the local pronounciation of "Goat cheese", that strange
   >brownish dairy product whose taste an American friend of mine 
   >eloquently compared to harsh mice oil.
 
    They take the goat's milk and boil it some until it carmelizes the
    sugar some.  The cheese is brown, and has a sweet taste. I like it,
    though some say it tastes like peanut butter. Nothing like your
    snooty-French-restaurant-"Chevre".
 
    You can buy it in your local supermarket, in the somewhat-fancy-cheeses
    section.  A little red box about 5x5x10 (centimeters), under the brand
    name "Ski Queen".  (What else?)
 
    MUST be cut in very thin slices.  THE tool to use is that marvelous
    Norwegian invention, the ost-hovel, "cheese plane", which is rather
    common here too.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: [email protected] (Anne Cathrine Elster)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Date: 19 Jun 90 20:03:28 GMT
    Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
 
    The Norwegian Dairy Association (Meieriene) markets the goat cheese
    known as G-35 (do I remember correctly?) or "Guldbrandsdalost" under
    the brandname "Ski Queen" here in the US (at least in NY). It is
    labelled "Gjetost", where "gjet" is the "Riksmaals" form of the word
    "Goat" (usually known as geit in "Bokmaal", though "gjet" may be an
    optional form.
        
    Incidentially,  G-35(?) is made of a mixture of cows milk and goats
    milk and milder than the pure goatsmilk version one labelled "Gjetost"
    in Norway.
 
    Anne C. Elster 
    Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, USA		
    [email protected]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    From: [email protected] (Hans Henrik Eriksen)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: Gjetost
    Date: 20 Jun 90 07:42:39 GMT
  
 
    	There are several versions of goat cheese in Norway, some brown,	
    sweet version swhich is widely used and some white, often referred	to
    as the "real" goat cheese. I tried "the real thing" from the	
    inner parts of Sognefjorden, the largest fjord in Norway, and it	
    smelled and tasted like goats, and that is, ehh..., umm.., not so	
    nice...
 
    	About gamalost, it reminds me of a story I heard about a Norwegian	
    who tried to get a piece of the "old" cheese through the Canadian	
    customs to give to his or hers relatives. The customs officers	
    thought it was some really dangerous bacterial substance (perhaps for
    warfare :-) and confiscated it immediately.
 
	Hans Henrik Eriksen
	Univ. of Oslo ([email protected])

Gjetost is sold in the Star market in Newton.  I have no idea what the locals
make of it.  It is at its best sliced very thin (as stated) and served on
Marie-type cookies.

Gamelost is a definite miss for me and most of my Norwegian in-laws.  They
were amazed it was even served to us in a restaurant (in Voss) and even more
amazed that we had nibbled at it.  One little nibble was as far as it went.

   Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic                  
   From: [email protected] (Alf Christophersen)
   Subject: Re: Tried Sour Cream Porridge ?
   Sender: [email protected] (Mr News)
   Organization: University of Oslo
   Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 05:05:17 GMT
 
 
    Here's another recipe:
 
    0.5 l sour cream (33% fat) (named 'seterr�mme' in Norway)
    3 dl wheatflour
    about 1 1/2 l milk
    1/2 ts salt
    sugar
    cinnamon
 
    Boil the sour cream slowly covered for 10 min. Sift in 1/3 of the wheat
    flour. Let it boil slowly and whisk carefully now and then. Spoon of
    the butter that gather on top and set aside warm for use when serving.
    Sift on the rest of the wheat flour, whisk carefully, but thoroughly
    and add milk until wanted thickness. Let boil slowly for 5 more
    minutes, taste it with salt. Serve with sugar, cinnamon, melted butter
    and drink blackcurrant juice and water with it.