#palt

october 10, 2009

Ingredients: pork belly, pork pate, potatoes, flour, salt, butter, optional topping beet jam (beets, lemon, ginger, sugar)

Portraits

After playing a game of chess Erin: "You've been practicing. This is the first time I've lost a match to you." Palt: "Would you rather I pretended to lose?" Erin: "I'd fire you if you did."

Palt, the beloved potato lumps of my home. This is not so much a recipe as a vague guide to making them. You need: About a kilo of potatoes, raw and peeled Finely ground salt Flour, definitely wheat, probably barley and rye (About 250 grams of raw cubed pork belly or bacon) Butter Lingonberry jam Utensils: A blender, grinder and/or grater A sieve One large bowl and one small bowl One really large pot and one smaller pot A skimmer First, you need raw and peeled potatoes. Lots of them. At least a kilo. Turn them into a mush, any way you can. My grandma had a potato grinder, like a meat grinder, for this specific purpose. You can grate them, I usually do. You can run them in a blender, if your blender can manage potatoes. (Sometimes, I grate and then blend.) The finer, the better. Take the potato mush, and let it run off in a sieve for a bit. It's usually too wet to make a good dough. You can turn the mush over a few times, to get more fluid out. Then, in a bowl, you mix the mush with some finely ground salt. No, more than that. You need lots of salt. (Potatoes eat salt.) Mix in flour. You can choose your flour in a number of ways. I prefer about half a cup of barley, one-two cups of rye, and the rest wheat. Mix well. The dough should be slightly stickier than bread dough. Bring two pots of salted water to a boil. One should be your largest pot, about two thirds full. Get a skimmer. I have a rounded wooden one, just for palt. http://butik.koksshopen.se/produkter/laga-mat/tillagningsverktyg/slik-slev/paltslev.html Now, you decide if you want your palts filled with pork or not. If you want pork, use pork bellies or bacon, finely cubed. This is fläskpalt. I usually prefer them without, and not just because of the lesbian joke. They're "flatpalt", literally flat palt, and the most common slang for lesbian in Swedish is "flata". Get a bowl of cold water. Wet your hands, and shape lumps of dough. If you're making flatpalt, make thin, saucer shaped lumps. If you're making fläskpalt, make an impression with your fingers in the saucer, fill it with raw pork cubes and enclose the pork in the dough. Roll it into a ball. (You can use wheat flour instead of cold water if you want. It'll give a smoother surface.) Yes, it's very sticky. Take your skimmer, and use it to lower your palt into the small pot. The water in both pots should be boiling. Let the palt rise to the top, and then use your skimmer to move it to the large pot. Repeat. It's important to have lots of water, or they'll coalesce into one giant lump. The palts should boil (not simmer) for about an hour, until they rise again. Test one, and make sure it's completely solid and the pork is cooked. Serve with butter and lingonberry jam, and some extra fried pork belly cubes. Don't plan on doing anything afterwards. The "palt coma" is famous.