Breakfast in Skurdalen, from the one who makes it.

Sarah emily posted a bit about breakfast in Norway. The breakfast that she and others have eaten that I make in the cabin in Skurdalen (pronounced, roughly, "skrewdallin,") is influenced by the smorgasbord-y breakfasts common in scandinavia, the bread, cheese and eggs that they consume constantly, and my dad's awesome cooking skills, straight outta southern california.

Basically, the key is, use everything in the little cabin refrigerator, including whatever is left of last night's fish dinner. It's important to have at least one hot "centerpiece" - this is to satisfy the American in me.

Usually, it's potatoes. To make the potatoes:

scrub a buncha little potatoes (you can peel if you want, but I never do) - either red or white
cube the potatoes
cube one small-medium sized onion
finely chop or crush 4 cloves of garlic
put a 1/4 stick of butter or (for vegans, lactards, and the rest of the butter-averse) a bunch of oil (vegetable or olive) in a frying pan
add onions on medium heat
add garlic
saute about 2 minutes
add in potatoes
stir pan with spatula every 1-2 minutes
dice 1 red, yellow or orange pepper (optional)
dice 1 zucchini (optional)
(you can add pretty much any vegetables you have, they will change it up a little, I have found peppers and zucchini particularly satisfying, but carrots, broccoli, etc can also be good - or you can skip the extra veggies altogether and just revel in starchy goodness)
after potatoes have been in pan for about 10-15 minutes, add zucchini and pepper
add salt & lots of pepper
add garlic powder if you feel like it
cook - stirring often to avoid burning, and adding more butter/oil (especially necessary when using butter) whenever it seems prudent.
you can now be done, if you wish. Vegans must finish here.

optionally, you can scramble/fry an egg into the potatoes.
to do this, whisk an a few eggs, and optionally, some milk in a bowl.
pour the mixture over the potatoes and stir it around.
it's done when the eggs are cooked to your liking.

AND/OR

add cheese!
you can grate it or just break off hunks. In Norway I almost always use gulost (yellow cheese - which is sort of like a mild cheddar) or jarlsberg (a mild swiss-like cheese) for this.
add chunks of cheese liberally with the heat on medium low and stir until it melts.

when the potatoes are done, put them in a brightly colored bowl with some kind of ikea utensil for serving.



Moving on from the potatoes,
another key element is the boiled egg.
you need an egg cup for everyone
boil the eggs to their liking (softer is better for this purpose).
put each egg in an egg cup.
when it's time to eat the egg, tap your knife on the side of the egg near the very top to crack it a little, and then slice off the top.
if you like, add a little salt and or pepper to exposed egg.
now using your little bitty spoon, scoop the egg out of it's shell to eat it. you can eat it off the spoon, or you can put it on bread as part of your smorbrod assembly.

which brings us to smorbrod, the real heart of the breakfast. "Smor" in Norwegian, means butter. "bord" means table, thus, smorgasbord, buttertable. smorbrod is what norwegians eat for breakfast and lunch - butterbread. basically, you take some bread - usually a pretty heavy one with lots of seeds and stuff in it, and you spread some butter on it, and then you spread more stuff on it. the "smor" (butter) has come to mean more than just bread, so the smor is the spread, whatever you spread on it, and that's what we but on the smorgasbord (spread table!)

Here are some typical things for the smorgasbord:

bread, sliced in a basket sitting next to the toastmaster (person sitting next to the toaster is the toastmaster. they toast bread on request for the rest of the table) you might have a graabrod, very rough bread, "loff" (pronounced "loof") which is yummy white bread, solskinnbrod, which is sunshine bread and has sunflower seeds, and whatever other bread you baked or picked up at the bakery. Also in the breadbasket there may be Wasa crackers or other breadlike objects that you can spread things on.

cheeses. set them out on a wooden board with a knife and a cheeseslicer (norwegian invention!). I usually but out all the kinds of cheese in the fridge, usually at least one yellow cheese, one brown cheese (usually geitost, a brown sort of sweet caramelly goat cheese - geit means goat), something kind of creamy and/or stinky, and then whatever else you picked up.

veggies. usually a tomato (tomat), a pepper (paprika), a cucumber (agurk), put on a board with a paring knife so people can slice their own. these are key.

meats/fishies. salami or other sliced meat, any leftovers. often I poach the fish (fisk) that we catch in the lake, and if you make it nice the night before it's very yummy the next day. sometimes I reheat it by sauteeing it in a little parsley butter (persillesmor) just before breakfast. (there is no microwave at the cabin, which is why the food always tastes better). also, jars of little fishes, brined and pickled - herring mostly. These are not my favorite, but sometimes I put them out so folks can try. Norwegians also like to eat little shrimps (reker) and breakfast. I can't usually afford it, but smoked salmon is also a biggy. and yummy. sometimes also there is bacon, but the norwegians have nothing to do with that :).

Boiled eggs. I know we already had them in our eggcups, but it's important to also have them hardboiled for peeling and putting in the eggslicer (another norwegian invention!), which then makes perfect smorbrod slices.

also key are butter, jams (syltetoy) (the norwegians are big on blueberry), nutella or other chocolate (sjokolade) spread.


then everyone sits down with their hot beverage, their cold beverage, and gets started on their eggcup, the bread gets toasted, people have some potatoes, and then the spreading begins. At this point it is also key to *make your lunch* - which you do by spreading your bread (all open face sandwiches in norway) and then putting a piece of wax paper between each piece of spread bread. then you wrap it in more wax paper - or if you're modern like me, a plastic bag.

then you go swimming in the lake and fall asleep with your book on your face.