norwegian food

• Brun Ost (Brown Cheese)

• Tyttebær sherbet

Brown Cheese, Please

Do you remember  your first taste of brown cheese? For many of us, brunost was the first real culinary bite of Norway (and it certainly was a gentler ay to start than with lutefisk!). I tasted my first brunost in the mid-80’s at the University of Oregon, where some of our wild and extremely crazy Norwegian exchange students introduced my friends and me to the  Ski Queen brand. Back then, it was the only Norwegian-style brown cheese brand available in Oregon. It was love at first bite. Mild and caramel tasting, it was delicious on flatbread or as a study snack with sliced green apples. By the time we graduated, we’d developed “ostehovel wrist” from pulling so much brown cheese.

After I married one of these exchange students some years later and ended up here in Oslo, a whole world of brunost opened up. Today, in a typical Norwegian supermarket you can find up the 15 varieties of brown cheeses ranging from the very strong “Ekte Geitost” goat cheese to the milder cow’s milk brown cheeses and spreadable Prim-type products.

What you can do with brown cheese is limited only by your imagination. I once met a young man from Mexico in a Norwegian class. He told me how on a visit back home to Mexico City he brought his mother a hunk of goat cheese. He just about dropped his Dos Equis at his welcome home party with his mother proudly sashayed her way to the table with platters full of goat cheese tacos and enchiladas. Now, you might not want to be htat daring, but hopefully the following recipes from the Norske Meierieer will get your creative juices flowing!

Real Norwegian Wild Sauce

Brown butter and flour in a pan. Stir in warm bouillon and rømme. Add goat cheese and spices. Boil sauce for 10 minutes.

Warm Dessert Sauce

100 g Gudbrandsdalsost or fløtemysost
¾ dl whole milk
1 ss sirup
almonds

Grate cheese and melt with milk and sirup. Stir until sauce is smooth. Pour over ice cream or waffles. Garnish with chopped almonds.    

Tyttebær sherbet

Originally published in the October 1993 issue of the Fjord Flyer.

It’s tyttebær time!!  Those of you married to Norwegian men who adore tyttebær (and can’t eat their meat stew without it!), this might be a fun surprise:

Simmer 250 grams (just over ½ lb) of tyttebær (bright red “lingonberries” or mountain cranberries, now available fresh in the stores) with 120 grams sugar and .75 dl (not very much!) water, for about 10 minutes.  Cool and flavor with about ¼ cup Aquavitt (or a little more if you really like it).  Freeze the mixture in an ice cream freezer.  Serve with a little freshly ground pepper on the top!