The twenty-seventh day before Christmas

For your enjoyment here's a selection of readings on that seasonal treat, lutefisk!

Photo found on flickr.com, by user emoeby.  If you look in the background, you'll see a plate with a traditional Christmas menu: lutefisk, mashed potatoes, peas, carrots and ham.

A recipe (found here):

First of all, invite brave people over for dinner who do not have misconceptions about this wonderful fish! Next, go to a store that carried the freshest of fish and seafood. Ideally, you would get the lutefisk that they pull out of a barrel (most stores hate those barrels a lot and don't do that anymore). Second best, it comes skinless and "trimmed" and packaged in a plastic. 

Purchase the lutefisk a day before you want to serve it. Take it out of the plastic bag, put it in a large bowl, and cover with ice water. Change this water two to three times and keep in the refrigerator (if your family will let you). This firms up the fish.

Put the lutefisk in a glass baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Put in a preheated oven at 375 degrees F. for 25 to 30 minutes. The fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork. Do not overcook it or it will look like white Jello! It will be not brown.

In Minnesota, we allow at least a pound of lutefisk per person, served with hot melted butter. The two side dishes are riced potatoes and very small cooked frozen peas - no exceptions. And, of course, you must have lefse.

A old joke from Minnesota: 

Well, we tried the lutefisk trick and the raccoons went away, but now we've got a family of Norwegians living under the house!

Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days: 

Every Advent we entered the purgatory of lutefisk, a repulsive gelatinous fishlike dish that tasted of soap and gave off an odor that would gag a goat. We did this in honor of Norwegian ancestors, much as if survivors of a famine might celebrate their deliverance by feasting on elm bark. I always felt the cold creeps as Advent approached, knowing that this dread delicacy would be put before me and I'd be told, "Just have a little." Eating a little was like vomiting a little, just as bad as a lot.

Garrison Keillor, Pontoon 

Lutefisk is cod that has been dried in a lye solution. It looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks, but after it is soaked and reconstituted and the lye is washed out and it's cooked, it looks more fish-related, though with lutefisk, the window of success is small. It can be tasty, but the statistics aren’t on your side. It is the hereditary delicacy of Swedes and Norwegians who serve it around the holidays, in memory of their ancestors, who ate it because they were poor. Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people.

 See also “Lutefisk and Yams,” by Ulf Gunnarsson