Traditional food - Porridge

During my childhood - like many other Norwegian families - we ALWAYS had porridge for lunch at 1 pm on a Saturday.

For many years my mother had a cafe and catering business, and porridge was always on the menu on Saturdays. Later she sold the cafe and opened a clothing shop (yes, a very resourceful and independent woman). This was in the days before the late opening hours most places have these days - actually not more than about 10 years ago... - and we would close the shop on Saturdays at 1 pm. One of us (my mother, my sister or myself) would have had the day off and prepared the porridge.

I try to maintain some of the older, traditional Norwegian recipes in my own household, but I make slight changes to them as we don't use so much fat and butter in our diet anymore. Porridge is always a hit. We serve it with a knob of butter, cinnamon sprinkle and sugar and you would normally serve a red berry juice or cordial to accompany the meal. I cook the porridge  with skimmed milk and that works just as well as a more full fat variety of milk.

1,5 l of milk
1 3/4 dl of rice (short grain variety)
3/4 tsp of salt


Rinse the rice and add it to the boiling milk (stirr constantly and use a non stick pan!!)
Bring it to the boil and let it simmer for about 1 hr. Make sure you stirr occasionally.
Add the salt.

TIPS:
I suggest you double this recipe and use the leftovers in a pancake batter to make "Lapper" - or literally translated : "Patches".

Or whip some cream and mix in a few spoons of the cold porridge to make a traditional dessert "Riskrem"  served with a cold red sauce of pureed berries- I think you can figure out the English translation of that...

You can also make the porridge in a slightly different way:

I sometimes prepare it in the morning in the following way: after the milk has reboiled after adding the rice I take it off the stove and wrap it in a blanket. When you come home in the afternoon you just need to reheat the porridge and it is all done!