Pizza is the dinner most Norwegians eat. Then the taco comes whole. Food researcher and senior consultant John Spilling at Ipsos says that we have become very global in the way of food, and that it goes beyond traditional Norwegian food. The couple Magnus Liøkel (32) and Ole Kristian Samuelsen (28) want to do something about it. – I was actually interested in finding out a bit more about my own food culture and seeking out the dishes from my grandmother that I grew up with. So when I got the cookbook from my mother, we decided to make something, says Samuelsen. The couple have started a project where they will go through and make every single recipe in the handwritten cookbook of Samuelsen’s grandmother. This in the hope of becoming more familiar with Norwegian food culture, digging into family history and perhaps getting some of the dishes back on the dinner table. – Simply try to rediscover the old dishes, says Samuelsen. Grandmother Synnøve Pedersen together with Queen Sonja and King Harald many years ago. Photo: Privat More people want to learn about traditional Norwegian food In recent years, Nordland Bygdekvinnelag has seen an increase in the number of people who want to take back traditional Norwegian food. That’s what district manager Hilde Furuseth Johansen says. – We see that more people want to go on a course just to make lefser, renga cake, cured sausage and bring back the traditional Norwegian food. The village women’s association, which is a sub-organisation of Norsk Tradisjonsmat, works to preserve recipes and food traditions from all the counties in Norway. She believes that more people have started to take an interest in this in consultation with the increased interest in short-travel and sustainable food. – Traditional food says something about our history and where we come from. There can be a lot of social history in grandma’s cookbook, says Johansen. Ole Kristian and Magnus are happy to try dishes such as raspeball with syrup and pork, and lightly salted cod with liver and roe. Photo: Privat Salad with cod and mayonnaise For Samuelsen, the cookbook is about the history of his family and the culture from Troms and Finnmark. The book contains everything from typical home cooking, cake, bread and lefse recipes, as well as company menus consisting of, for example, fish cabaret for starters, fillet of beef for main course, and ice cream and wreath cake for dessert. Toscakake Light-wined Wienerbrød. Scones rolls, rough crusts or crusts. Famous children have many names.Oat macaroons.Gingerbread, but not the kind you make for Christmas. – It’s just as if it triggered a food memory in my brain. Sinking my teeth into that cake or biscuit took me back to my childhood, says Samuelsen. But not everything in the homemade cookbook is good. – What is the strangest dish they have come across so far? – Grandma has two salads in the book. Salad one and salad two, says Samuelsen. Salad two is boiled vegetables with mayonnaise and boiled cod. Ole Kristian Samuelsen says it’s fresh to call it a salad, because there weren’t many lettuce leaves in those dishes Photo: Private – It’s a kind of leftover salad where you could use your cod dishes, Liøkel explains. – Here we bought very good ingredients, used good cream and followed the recipe to the letter. But it wasn’t that good, laughs Samuelsen. Pizza-eating people – We are an extremely pizza-eating people. One out of ten dinners we eat is pizza. That is three times as much as what comes in second place, namely tacos, says researcher John Spilling in Ipsos. Tala he uses comes from Norske spisefakta 2022, and is a survey that has been carried out every quarter since 1987. – What is most interesting is how this has developed. We have become very global in the food sector in Norway, says Spilling. Pizza is the dinner most Norwegians eat. Photo: JOE RAEDLE / AFP Because even though many people want to go on a course and learn more about traditional Norwegian food, it is not what we cook most of on a daily basis. Over the course of a month, we prepare dishes such as Italian pasta, Mexican tacos, American burgers, Indian food and Asian sushi. – We have a wider international food repertoire than we had before. The challenge is that these dishes grow incredibly fast, says Spilling. Which means that there is often no room for the Norwegian dishes at the dinner table anymore. – So the loser in this is, in a way, traditional Norwegian. The fact that someone is starting to address this again is something I have been waiting for. For now it is the Norwegians who need a boost again. Need to know where someone comes from The Sambuar couple hopes that the project can give them two or three dishes that they can take with them into their everyday life. – Then I would call this a great success, says Samuelsen. By knowing the history of food and the dishes that are in the housewives’ books, he believes that one will firstly become a better cook, but also become prouder of the dishes that we have in Norway. The couple is behind the popular Instagram account Sultne Gutter, and they have published two cookbooks. Photo: Private – I think you have to know a little about where you come from. Today, it is too easy to choose sushi, Asian or other dishes that are far from Norwegian culture, says Samuelsen. The Sambuar couple would advise anyone who has obtained their grandmother’s home-made cookbook to take care of it.
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More people want to learn about traditional Norwegian food – Ole and Magnus will make all the recipes in grandma’s cookbook – news Nordland
