Norwegian Klub - (pronounced Klooob)

My maternal Norwegian ancestry grandparents.

Mom & me 1941

In a particularly nostalgic mood this morning, I harkened back to my childhood and some of my mom’s Norwegian style cookery.

 Our household was divided between the Germanic culinary leanings of my father and my two younger brothers and me and my mom’s Scandinavian favorites. Of course, those were the days before pizza and fast foods were yet widely known in America. I even told my mom occasionally I liked her to make lutefisk. This was a stretch because the taste of salted half decayed cod, with the consistency of Jell-O, left a little to be desired. Still, I think it made her day to know that someone else in the family would eat the stuff.   This morning though my thoughts turned to something she called Klub, also known in the Upper Midwest as Kumla and a variety of other names. I loved it.

It’s basically Norwegian potato dumplings. There are dozens of recipes on the internet for it today. Most are incrementally different but add up to the same thing. I stick with mom’s recipe.  

4 cups grated potatoes

3 cups flour    ½ teaspoon baking powder

Pork hocks

Your boil the hocks or any kind of pork with a bone

Peel and grate or use blender to chop the potatoes

Then you mix the potatoes and flour in a large bowl to the “right consistency.”  That’s the tricky part that took some practice.  Your make balls a little bigger than golf balls. Too compacted and you get a heavy golf ball to eat.  To soft and mushy it separates and floats to the top when you drop it in the boiling water.  Remove the pork for a while giving the dumplings room to do their thing….:)  I give each boiling step anywhere  from thirty minutes to an hour obviously depending on whether you used a precooked bone in ham or not.

The key in serving is to follow Julia Child's famous dictum.... "drench it in butter".  Any leftovers can be fried in bacon the next morning.  All right this isn't for light or picky eaters. Even Mrs. T. liked the Klub but said she had seen the last of pork hock ever.  I said I'd upscale to a small bone in ham or pork roast "the next time." Bon Appetite