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Originally Posted by wolf
You don't actually eat that crap, do you, dis?
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Not in nearly a decade, but it was once an annual christmas ritual (no, really. The part about "No more than once a year" is serious, even the most devout don't seem to cross that line.)
But for me, the foul swill is tempered in nostalgia (read: permanent brain damage), so if you ever come across the stuff, and are feeling brave enough to give it a shot, let me give you a few pointers:
1) As soon as you feel like you're going to gag, give up. Fill yourself up on the boiled potatoes, or the boiled peas, or the boiled whatever. If they've got lefse (the scandanavian equivalent of the tortilla, but made from potatoes), load the gullet with that. It's good with cold butter. This dish is an interesting study in Newtonian physics: The more you try to force it, the more it forces back.
2) Never, ever, examine it before you eat it. The article I posted suggested it was filled with a myriad of tiny, invisible bones, but here's the sad truth: Lutefisk is an artifact to the days before refridgeration. They'd catch codfish out of the baltic, dry it on the docks, soak it in lye to kill the maggots (or anything else potentially growing on it), and then rehydrate through a long soak. They'd then bake the crap out of it. Contrary to the previously linked article, absolutely nothing would retain any sort of structural continuity: It was all somewhat jellified. Thus, the family tradition was to disguise it behind a cream sauce to try to forget what we were eating, and then cover that in allspice in order to forget the unpalatable horrors of the sauce. From there on out, we'd typically rely on some relative that couldn't stomach the stuff and start sneaking our sustenance for that holiday meal by sneaking portions of whatever alternative dish they'd made instead. As for trying to visually disect it beforehand: The process does horrible things to the fish. It turns out that when you can discern a translucent and softened fish spine, it has a pretty reliable tendency to force you back to guideline #1. Seriously, this is not a time for visual observation. This is a good time to think about the pleasant holiday possibilities instead, such as
Joulupukki, the christmas goat (no, really. you can't make this stuff up.)
3) As far as anyone can discern, lutefisk is more a hazing ritual than anything else. I never could properly stomach the stuff (my inaugural effort led to a rather violent purging (at least by 10-year old standards)), and as best I can tell, the only americans that claim to appreciate the stuff are the ones that were force-fed it through too many holiday seasons, and have decided the only proper revenge is to force it upon future generations.
But, all those helpful pointers aside, I could probably manage a plate of it today. Partially from nostalgia, partially glad that it isn't something truly horrid, such as
surstromming. Apparently, if you buy that particular horror canned, you need to forget everything you think you know about botulism. Just because the can is bulging at both ends, the tradition states that you should consider that "ripe" and not reason for calling the CDC. (although familial stories suggest that the stuff was so supremely vile, even the most stout-hearted scandanavian relatives couldn't face it, and it was so far removed from edible fish that the family cat fled in terror)
Stories such as these kind of make one appreciate their own ethnically historic traditions.