>> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> ♪ No, take me home ♪ Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

♪♪ Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

[ Theme music plays ] >> Viestad: Hi.

And welcome to "New Scandinavian Cooking" and to this culinary journey that will take us to the heartland of Norway.

Roros in Sor-Trondelag.

I'm Andreas Viestad.

Roros is far off the beaten track, far away from the coast, where most people in Norway live.

Still, it has become a culinary destination.

It is a place where traditions are being kept and where new and exciting products and dishes are being invented.

Perhaps it's here we can find the future of the Nordic cuisine.

In today's program, we'll venture high and low.

The food will be hot and cold, sweet and salty.

One of the things that this mountain region is most famous for is its dairy products.

And I'm going to use a fabulous local sour cream to make a recipe that meant a lot to me as a kid.

My great-aunt's crispy sour cream waffles.

And then I'll surrender to the cold 'cause when the world hands you snow and sub-zero temperatures, then the smartest thing you can do is to make ice cream.

I'm going to make a cloudberry ice cream using cloudberries, eggs, cream, milk, sugar and an eight ball.

I'll explain later.

I'm also going to visit my good friend Mikael Forselius and learn how to make a local delicacy, my favorite, fermented sausage, or surpolse.

And for main course today, I'm going to make a Norwegian family favorite, meatballs in gravy using local organic meat and a splash of local beer.

[ Horn honks ] Norway is a country defined by the sea.

We fish.

We sail.

And most of us live by the coast.

And Roros is about as far away from the coast as you can get.

And historically, it's been pretty isolated.

The train didn't arrive here until 1877.

And even then, it took 2 days to get here by train from the capital.

But perhaps because of that isolation, there has been innovation.

When you can't get fresh produce, you have to find a way to make what you have last all through the year.

So people here have been experts in salting, curing, fermenting and cheese making.

And of course, today, that innovation is what we consider tradition.

And so it is with food.

And today, Roros is anything but isolated.

There's a small airport.

There's train service to Oslo and the regional capital, Trondheim, every other hour.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of tourists come here to experience the food, the drink and the architecture.

Hello!

For a long time, the main reason people visited Roros was the buildings, the architecture, the feeling that history's ever present.

But that can't be all.

And that's certainly not the only visit why I visit.

I come here because it is a unique culinary meeting place between different food cultures, that of the rich agricultural lowlands, of the mountains, of the indigenous Sami population and the Swedes just on the other side of the border.

[ Bell ringing ] If you ask a Norwegian who's not from Roros what kind of food he or she associates with the town, they will probably answer dairy products -- milk, cream, butter, and, not least, sour cream.

I'm going to use the delicious organic sour cream to make a recipe that I remember from my childhood -- my great-grand-aunt's sour cream waffles.

It is, if you just look at the components of the recipe, pretty crazy recipe.

But it's also unforgettably delicious.

It starts off with normal sort of waffle ingredients -- 200 grams or about 1 1/4 cup of normal all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar.

And now comes the crazy part, 6 deciliters.

That's nearly 2 1/2 cups of sour cream.

And 2 deciliters, about 2/3 cup, of water.

This batter seems to be too runny and too fatty.

It seems impossible that it will work.

But it does work.

It is tried and tested.

Mmm.

Mmm.

One of the things that most non-Norwegians find puzzling about the way we serve our waffles is that we haven't quite decided whether it's a sweet dish or a savory dish.

So sometimes we serve it with fresh fruit or compotes or jams, sometimes with charcuterie and sometimes both at the same time, which is actually the most delicious thing.

In this case, I'm serving with a lingonberry preserve.

It's not too sweet.

It's actually called lingonberry ketchup.

It's not very ketchup-y.

But it's somewhere in between a jam and just fresh berries.

And even more sour cream, just a little dollop.

And here it is, sour cream waffles with cured meat, lingonberries and even more sour cream.

If you can't find lingonberry, you can also use cranberry.

Or you can use a sweeter berry like raspberry.

You can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

Originally, Roros was a tiny trading post.

Then, in 1644, copper was discovered here.

And that started 300 years of mining.

The town and at least some of its inhabitants became incredibly rich.

[ Bell ringing ] Roros is the coldest town in southern Norway.

Sub-zero temperatures are quite normal for months at a time.

Winter lasts, well, I wouldn't say forever, but it feels like it lasts forever.

Hi.

>> Hi.

>> Viestad: Hi.

Good to see you again.

>> Yeah.

Would you like to take some, uh, local produced ice cream and, uh, sorbet?

>> Viestad: Yes, absolutely.

>> Here we have a blueberry sorbet.

>> Viestad: It's perfect winter food.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: And it's such a strong color, eh?

>> Yeah.

It's made of blueberry that we grow in the district, there, high in the mountains in very short summers.

So you get this extra taste in the blueberry.

>> Viestad: Delicious.

Mmm.

>> Yeah.

And we have some lingonberry ice cream here.

>> Viestad: Oh, this is a Nordic food program.

So we must always eat lingonberry at one point.

>> Yeah, of course.

>> Viestad: Mmm.

It's very nice.

It's got a little bit of that tartness from lingonberry that you can also find in cranberries.

How did you get into ice cream production?

>> Yeah.

We have a big production of eggs on the farm here.

And then we have some eggs that are not, you say, built for ordinary sale.

They are wrong size or a little bit... >> Viestad: Yeah.

I have chickens myself.

I know that some of them will come out a little bit wrinkled or have two yolks.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: And normally, they're thrown away because you never buy them in the store.

But you use them to... >> Yeah.

We use them in the production of the farm food here.

>> Viestad: Delicious.

I'm actually quite inspired.

I think that, on such a beautiful winter day, it's the only appropriate thing to do.

So I'll go and make some ice cream myself.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

Do that.

>> Viestad: Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Viestad: And I need a total of 10 egg yolks and then 2 1/2 deciliters or 1 cup of sugar.

Some recipes for ice cream are awfully complicated.

They say that you must heat the custard over a bain-marie.

But you can also just scald the egg yolks in boiling milk like this.

And I'm going to flavor the ice cream with yet another wonderful Nordic berry, the cloudberry.

And this is quite a strange berry in the sense that it only grows very far north.

So it will not grow in southern Norway and not in Germany or France or Italy or anywhere like that.

It grows in abundance in northern Norway north of the Arctic Circle and also here up in the mountain regions.

And the flavor is wonderful.

It has some aromas almost like baked apples.

So, in Alaska and northern Canada, it's sometimes referred to as baked apple berry.

You will probably not be able to find it where you live.

But you can actually order by mail order some cloudberry preserves.

Then you just don't need the sugar.

And it won't be ice cream without cream.

So I'm adding 1 quart of cream, 1 liter of cream, as well.

And for the somewhat peculiar way that I'm going to prepare the ice cream, I need one more thing, namely an eight ball.

I'll explain later.

So it might seem like the wrong time of year to make ice cream.

But just think of it.

What do we have a lot of in Norway during winter?

Well, we've got cold, that's for sure.

And what do you need to make ice cream?

You get the picture?

So the eight ball in here is gonna make sure that the ice cream is stirred all the time.

So I'm just gonna tape it shut.

And just driving around will make the ice cream perfectly churned so it won't just freeze into one big lump.

Okay.

[ Speaks Norwegian ] Now, the eight ball in there is gonna bounce around and make sure that we'll have a smooth ice cream.

Otherwise, if you just freeze all the batter in one, it will be hard.

So that's why you either need a bucket, an eight ball and a sled during winter, or you need an ice cream maker.

[ Bell ringing ] Whoa.

Oh!

Hi.

>> Hi.

>> Viestad: You want some ice cream?

>> Yes, please.

>> Viestad: Now it'll be exciting to see how the ice cream has turned out.

At least I can't hear the eight ball anymore.

That's a good sign.

And there is the eight ball.

>> [ Chuckles ] >> Viestad: Ah.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Viestad: It's not too bad, eh?

>> Yeah.

It's nice.

>> Viestad: My good friend Mikael Forselius is one of the central figures in the food scene here in Roros.

Originally a Swede.

But you lived here for -- for more than 20 years.

So that qualifies as a local.

We're going to go inside and look at one of the culinary treasures of Roros.

>> Yes.

>> Viestad: Oh, and this I'm really looking forward to because what we're going to experience now is one of the most unique delicacies of the region, the fermented sausage.

>> Yeah, it is.

It's an old, old tradition in this area.

If you had a farm and you have the season for send your cattle to the butcher, the last thing you make was this kind of sausage.

>> Viestad: So this is made with the leftover meat after you cut away the steaks and the hams and everything that's fine.

>> And the special thing is also you don't mince the raw meat.

You cook it first.

>> Viestad: Yep.

And you have a combination of different meats.

>> Yes.

It's 1/3 of lamb meat.

And it's a 2/3 beef.

>> Viestad: And it could be moose as well if you were lucky as a huntsman.

>> Definitely.

Definitely.

So to start with, I take the meat.

>> Viestad: Mm-hmm.

>> And I'm going to cut it into small pieces.

>> Viestad: Mm-hmm.

>> And we're going to mince it.

And then you can mix in the barley.

And then we're going to have some salt and then ginger.

>> Viestad: Mm-hmm.

Powdered ginger.

>> And then caraway.

>> Viestad: Caraway.

And now comes the unusual ingredient, right?

>> Yes.

We're going to have some cultured milk.

>> Viestad: Some cultured milk or you can also use buttermilk, right?

>> Yes.

Yes.

And this is an organic, local one.

>> Viestad: And how much?

>> About 1/2 liter.

>> Viestad: So about 2 cups?

>> Yes.

>> Viestad: And the barley will aid in the fermentation.

It will actually feed some of the lactic acid bacteria, right?

>> Yeah.

It's going to make the sausage very -- the consistency and the juiciness is gonna be very nice with the barley also.

>> Viestad: So in a way, it was used probably originally just to make the meat go longer.

And it ends up with creating a more juicy and more interesting sausage.

>> Definitely.

>> Viestad: But it's not finished yet.

>> No.

No.

Now, we're going to hang it up in a dry room.

>> Viestad: And what happens then is, actually, it will ferment.

The bacteria from the cultured milk will start eating at the barley.

>> Yes.

>> Viestad: But that's a good process.

>> Yeah.

>> Viestad: It's not a bad process.

What it will do is it will lower the pH in the sausage so it will conserve it.

So it can keep almost indefinitely.

>> Yes.

After two weeks, they're ready to eat.

You can fry it an eat it.

But you can have it all winter.

>> Viestad: Now, we've taken the finished cured sausage and just put it in a pan and left it at low temperature until it started sweating out some of its fat.

And it's actually cooked in its own fat.

And now it's nice and crispy.

And I'm excited to taste it again.

Mmm.

And it smells wonderful.

Ah, you can even hear that crispiness.

You want a taste as well?

>> Yes, please.

>> Viestad: Hot.

Mmm.

Mmm.

It's delicious.

It has some of that sort of roundness and these big flavors of charcuterie.

But still, it's got this acidity and freshness to it.

It's a very sort of complex flavor.

And with the crispiness, it's a super food experience.

>> Yeah.

And you have the mix between the crispy skin and the soft, soft barley inside it.

>> Viestad: You can find all the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

We're on our way from Roros to the neighboring village of Tolga, where we're going to visit a dairy and cattle farm.

This here elaborate style of building that we refer to as the Swiss style is common in much of Norway.

And the reason is that the first train stations were built in this style.

And people came.

And they started copying the style.

And they started building their own buildings so that it looked like the train station.

>> [ Speaking Norwegian ] Viestad: What do you produce here?

>> We're producing mainly milk and meat.

>> Viestad: This is a quite typical Norwegian farm.

>> Yes.

>> Viestad: So we don't have these special breeds to maximize everything.

It's the same animal that gives you meat and dairy.

And I think that's a good thing.

>> Yes.

I think so, too.

That's good.

>> Viestad: Your family has been here for a long time.

>> Yes.

They've been here from middle of 15th century.

>> Viestad: Mm.

You do your farming organic.

>> Yes, I do.

>> Viestad: And to some people, organic seems like sort of a fashion thing.

But your great-great- great-great- grandfather and grandmother, when they were here and started up the farm, their farming was basically organic as well, wasn't it?

>> It was organic, absolutely.

Yes.

>> Viestad: So it's just a short period of time, your father maybe and your grandfather, did farming in a different manner.

And now you're back to basic.

>> Yes.

>> Viestad: Shall we let them in?

The wind is picking up, I think.

>> Yes, we can.

But they don't freeze.

>> Viestad: No.

But I do.

>> Yes.

[ Laughter ] I, too.

>> Viestad: You might have heard of Swedish meatballs.

But, if you ask a Norwegian, they'll say that Norwegian meatballs are much, much better.

And they're really, in a way, quite different, considering that Sweden is just a few miles over in that direction.

Here I have 900 grams, or 2 pounds of minced, organic, grass-fed beef, to which I'm adding 2 eggs, 2 1/2 deciliters, or 1 cup, of milk, about yea much.

And about 1/2 teaspoon of ground allspice and a little more than 1/2 a teaspoon of ground ginger.

Pepper.

It is interesting to note how much spices are used in traditional Norwegian cooking.

This was started 500, maybe 1,000 years ago.

And it has kept on till this day.

So in a traditional Norwegian recipe, you'd find more exotic spices than you would find the herbs that just grow outside the window.

And finally, a little bit of nutmeg.

Today, minced meat is cheap.

You buy it in bulk.

And you don't consider it to be fine food.

But in old times, it was considered just as fine as the finer cuts of meat.

So you couldn't use all meat in a meatball.

So you'd have to put some bread in as well.

This is just plain bread that I've left in the bread box for a few days.

So it's hard as rock.

It's really up to you how much bread crumbs you want to use.

But I'd say a couple of slices of dried bread or about 1/2 cup.

Now comes the controversial part.

Should you or should you not add raw onions?

Well, of course you should.

I like to fry the meatballs together with some onion so that it will caramelize.

Then you'll have some pieces of almost raw onion inside the meatballs and some of those sticky, sweet, wonderful caramelized onion on the outside that will also form part of the gravy.

When the meatballs are nicely browned but only half cooked, I'll transfer them to a bowl.

I'll continue cooking them in the gravy afterwards.

And I'm adding more butter, a couple of tablespoons.

And then I'm adding 2 1/2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour.

And, when this is nice and boiling like this, I'm adding some beer.

And this is a dark local beer, a porter that's not too bitter.

It will add a little bit of sweetness and maltiness to it.

And then I'm adding some beef stock.

You can also use bullion.

But that's really not as good as proper stock.

And then I'm adding the meatballs again.

And they'll cook through in the gravy.

And because of the special climate here in Roros, I've decided to break all our normal rules.

And we'll eat inside.

Remember that you can find all of the recipes at our website, newscancook.com.

[ Speaking Norwegian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ >> For more of the "New Scandinavian Cooking" experience, visit our website or Facebook page.

♪♪ >> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> Up Norway, curates Norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "New Scandinavian Cooking."

>> ♪ No, take me home ♪ Take me home where I belong >> Vgan, the full taste of chocolate.

>> Grieg Suites.

Chocolate with apples from Norway.

♪♪ Havila Voyages.

Pure Northern.

♪♪