The Christmas Recipe I Can't Live Without

I thought it might be fun to post some of our family Christmas recipes that have become a necessity. I’ll be glad to start.

I come from a Norwegian heritage. These "meatballs" are more like dumplings, but I can't imagine celebrating Christmas without them. This is my mother’s version of the recipe, a bit more updated than my grandmother’s. Please excuse the vagueness of some of the directions; this version dates from the early 1950’s.

Note: I have given up on finding graham bread in Kentucky. I use whole wheat. I usually triple the recipe, as the meatballs freeze beautifully.

This is most usually served with a combination of mashed potatoes and rutabagas, lefse, scalloped corn, a salad of red & green gelatin, and fatigmand or spritz cookies. (I think scalloped corn is the Northerner’s substitute for corn pudding.)


Norwegian Meatballs

1 lb each: veal, pork & beef, each finely ground
3 eggs, unbeaten
¾ c. fresh bread crumbs (graham bread preferred)
1 med. onion, grated
1 scant cup milk
2 tsp. salt
½ tsp. freshly ground pepper
½ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
½ tsp. ginger
½ tsp. allspice
Dash of curry powder

Put ingredients in large bowl and mix gently. Form ball (size of a golf ball) and drop a few at a time into kettle of boiling water that has been seasoned with one or two bouillon cubes, 1 medium onion, a few stalks of celery, and a bay leaf. (Mixture is very soft, but water firms.) Let simmer until balls hold their shape and come to surface.

Reserve liquid to cook down for gravy.

Arrange balls in a jelly roll pan. Brown in a 325 F. oven for 25 minutes.

After meatballs are baked, pour reduced poaching water over pan to get all the brownings. Thicken with flour or use cream of mushroom soup.

Serves 12-15.

[Robin Garr]

Those sound great, Gayle! And the funny thing about them is that with rather minor variations (veal alone, and lose the curry), they could pass for Northern Italian polpetti.

I've got to try the Norwegian version!

My family threatens to not have Thanksgiving or Christmas if I don't bring the peanut butter pie!

one 8 oz block cream cheese
1 to 2 cups of creamy or chunky peanut butter (to taste)
1.5 C powdered sugar
1-16 oz tub of extra creamy cool whip
2 graham cracker or oreo pie crusts

chocolate shavings


Blend cream cheese and peanut butter. Gradually, add powdered sugar. Mix well. Add Cool Whip.

Pour into pie shells, and refrigerate. Add shavings right before serving.

This pie is fantastic with a little dollop of Cool Whip or whipped cream on top, or if you're really feeling daring, you can always try chocolate Cool Whip!

The best part is, you can make the filling a few days in advance, and store it in an airtight container. Then, just leave it on the counter for a half hour or so to loosen up a bit, fill the pie shells, and voila!

Nothing like Hungarian HURKA...A large casing stuffed with rice...beef and pork...and a lot of seasoning...

I promised to post this receipe after the Seviche dinner- sorry it took so long. These really seem to please everyone I give them to. Thanks to Cooks Illustrated for the initial idea.

WARM SPICED NUTS
2 cups nuts (Pecans, Almonds and/or Cashews seem to work the best)

Spice Mix
2 Tbls Sugar
1/4 Tsp Kosher Salt
1/2 Tsp Cinnamon
1/8 Tsp Ground Cloves
1/8 Tsp Ground Allspice

Glaze
1 Tbls Dark Rum
2 Tsps Vanilla Extract
1 Tsp Brown Sugar
1 Tbls Unsalted Butter

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Spred nuts on a parchment lined cookie sheet and roast for 10 min until the color deepens and you can smell the nuts.

2) While the nuts are roasting mix all the ingredients for the spice mix

3) Bring the glaze ingedients to a boil in a saucepan stirring all the time. Stir in the nuts and stir until the nuts are shiny and most of the liquid has evaporated- maybe 2 or 3 min.

4) Transfer the glazed nuts to a bowl with the spice mix and toss well. Spread the nuts back onto the parchment cookie sheet and cool.

These don't taste like much when they are first made, but are yummy once they are totally cooled.
Since two cups don't go very far I make this receipe in multiples of ten.

Happy Holidays!!

My mother’s parents were born in Norway, which of course means my mother was Norwegian. Like everybody else, they had their own fattigmands bakkelse family recipe which we made once a year as part of the Christmas Eve baking extravaganza. We pronounced them “fah’timuhn buckles,” more or less, and although we grew up believing that meant “fat man’s buckles,” especially as we shaped them in what I later learned was a fairly unconventional way, sort of loosely suggesting a buckle, it turns out that “fattigmand” actually means “poor man” and “bakkelse” apparently translates as “cookie,” and so, obviously, the literal translation is “poor man’s cookie,” which is odd, given they’re an obscenely rich cookie, what with the cream and the booze and the extravagant spices and the frying and the copious amounts of powdered sugar they’re ultimately shaken (or stirred) in.

Traditionally, they are a Christmas cookie, made only once a year (Why? Because they’re a pain in the neck to make and although everybody loves them, nobody wants to actually make them), and so we at least got that part right – that and the part where they’re deep-fried in lard, which comes from the season and the thrifty notions that one "use everything," and so rendered fats managed to their way into nearly every winter food. Yum. And I mean that.

But why “poor man’s cookie,” then.... I suspect it’s because the only way you could get anybody to make them was to take them as slaves and chain them to a stove and a near-boiling pot of lard, with instructions to roll the dough as thin as paper otherwise they’d lose a hand. But no, seriously, I wonder whether they may have originated as scraps of dough that seemed unseemly to waste and which bakers sold in penny bags or took home with them, maybe dressed up with a bit of powdered sugar and pretty shapes, and which then over time, because they’re that good, turned into a seasonal thing that mostly mothers and daughters do together because when you’re five it looks like fun, and when you have a five-year-old, you’re desperate to find something to keep her occupied.

There are recipes all over the internet, and pretty much the same, give or take an egg or the booze. If anybody's interested, I'll either post mine here or send it to you. It's long.

Oh, I can't wait to taste the Fattigmands that you are making for me. Ours never had booze, but then Grandma was a charter member of the Towner, N.D. WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union). We always, just called them plain ole "Fattigmand" but I was always aware that it meant “poor man’s (cookies).

Our family recipe is thus:
Beat 6 egg yolks.
Add 4 tbsp. sugar and mix.
Add 6 tbsp. sweet cream,
1 tbsp. melted butter
½ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
2 cups flour
(Too much stirring makes tough.)
Roll thin, cut 2 gashes ½ “ long in center of each. Fry in deep fat at 370 for 2 or 3 minutes until golden brown or 375 for 1 to 1 ½ minutes. Drain on paper towels. Dust with powder sugar.

That looks pretty much like my recipe, only I tend to write recipes in paragraphs .

I hope you enjoy them as well. They're crisp, not soft, and I understand that's sometimes a debate with this type of cookie, whether to fry to soft dough consistency or crisp. Our family always preferred them crisp, which, to my mind, are more flavorful. On a related note, I've read a couple of articles the past week noting that it's a uniquely American habit to underbake and that we seem to think a darker dough pastry is over-cooked, when in fact it's the dark color that often will give you better flavor.

Then again, what with the powdered sugar and all, you can't tell what the color of the dough is.

I agree. I write my recipes in paragraphs, too. but I was copying my grandmother's recipe that she wrote out over sixty years ago. Her fattigmands were always crisp. Does that mean she didn't follow her own directions? I can't wait for Friday!

My grandmother always made LOTS of different cookies and on Christmas Eve we would always have cookies and peppermint ice cream as our dessert. Since my grandfather passed away, she no longer really cooks and she definitely doesn't bake - she ain't kidding either - I have tried!

SO I always try to make at least a few varieties of cookies for Christmas now and a must do is her recipe for "Kifflens".

1 lb Oleo (butter or marg)
1 cup sugar
5 cups flour
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups finely chopped pecans

Cream oleo and sugar (she used her hands). Add flour a little at a time, add vanilla and nuts. Roll between palms, shape into crescents. Bake 325 degrees for 20 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar while still hot.

I usually half the recipe and it still makes a ton!

Basically it's just a common nut meal cookie - I have seen similar ones that use almonds instead. Actually, my other grandmother makes a similar nut meal, crescent shaped cookie - but it is NOT rolled in powdered sugar and one end is dipped in chocolate.