Kumla Recipe - Untested by me...

I had mentioned Kumla and cotton candy when describing my weekend in our towns festival last weekend. A lot of you knew what cotton candy was, but were a little leery about the kumla...

Understandable!

I had never heard of it before moving here either, even with my Norwegian heritage! My family is German, Norwegian and English. In.that.order... I learned German in high school from my Norwegian grandpa! Because apparently that was the language that God knew best... The only Norwegian I learned, I learned from my best friend here who says Oofda fairly often and her husband taught Meri how to say the "This Little Piggy" poem in Norwegian.

So anyway, the first time I had kumla was at a local restaurant where the food had sat on a heated buffet table for a while before I got to it. According to my husband, it sat like a rock upon eating! I thought it was "ok".

But I had some a couple years ago at the festival, made by a good friend who runs a local bistro and it was AWESOME! Good and salty and bits of ham everywhere! She had been serving kumla on a stick but ran out of sticks by the time we arrived and we got the last few delicous servings. in a bowl.

wow...

There are tons of versions of kumla out there, but this one sounds the closest to how she made it. I should probably just call her and get it, but then she'd ask me what I did with the butter brickle brownie recipe that I'd cracked... Yeah - I'll share that with you sometime too... :)

If you try this recipe, please let me know!

Kumla

5 cups grated raw potatoes (hie you off to the root cellar and select
about 10 smallish to medium tubers) (large ones for baking)
3 tablespoon salt, heaping
1 cup rye flour
1/3 cup graham flour (try health food stores). Don't substitute.
1/4 pound fresh salt pork
2 teaspoon baking powder
3 cup all-purpose flour
Remove rind and cut up pork into small cubes. You may save some work by
letting the diner remove the rind, which is easier to do after being cooked.
Besides some intrepid non-Viking may actually eat the rind.
Combine dry ingredients by stirring with spoon and sifting.
In grating potatoes, good results can be had with a fine hand grater. Can
substitute food processor if you can get potatoes grated into small particles
without mushing them. The idea is to release enough water from the potatoes,
without adding tap water to the mixture, in order to get a moist dough.
Add the dry ingredients to the grated potatoes; not the other way around.
Mix with large spoon, metal or wooden, until all ingredients are mixed, and
the dough is moist. This is devilish hard work, but worth the efforts to do
it right. Have deep well kettle full of boiling water, to which has been added
one T salt. Moisten left hand in cold water, and with large spoon in right,
mold two T of dough around a cube of pork to make a dumpling. Make sure the
outer surface is seamed over so that it doesn't come apart in the pot. Moisten
hand with each dumpling. Drop dumplings into the boiling water and keep boiling
constantly. Cover pot to get steaming action. Don't allow dumplings to stick to
the bottom. Don't stir, but shake (rotate) kettle occasionally. Boil slowly for
60-90 minutes. This make approximately 20 dumplings, so that have that many
pork cubes available.

If eaten as soon as ready, skip the traditional heated fat. This was for
arctic residents. The pork gives enough fat, so that extra is not needed.
No need to sprinkle with salt, as there is plenty in the recipe and the
boiling water. Perhaps too much. Use pepper.

Crisp celery goes very well with this meal.

Credits for this recipe go to the Finder of Lost recipes website and Uncle Phaedrus - not MY uncle!