Krub (Rhymes With Boob)

Children can be so cruel.  Yesterday I was having a grand conversation with one of my daughters when she casually mentioned that she did not like a dish I had grown up with, Norwegian krub (rhymes with “boob”).

Readers of this column know that my two grandmothers were immigrant Norwegian.  As is usually the case, that means that their culture was the one their children were raised in.  I may love my English heritage, but it is the Lutheran Church, Vikings and the cool, low tones of Norwegian laissez faire upbringing that ruled my home roost.   

            Along with this came typically Norwegian cuisine.  Forget about lutefisk (a nasty fish cured in lye)--even the dog won’t eat that, but lefsa (imagine a rye flour tortilla) is good stuff and riskrem (rice pudding) is a real treat.  But none of that is what I remember with a smile when I think of down home Norwegian cooking.  No, number one on my list is a big, steaming bowl of krub.

            Krub (also called Klub, Norwegian Potato Dumpling and even body cake) does not look like a treat.  But if you have been served this dish every Saturday of your entire childhood, it is like mother’s milk.  To be honest this stuff does not look like gourmet fare.  This is not food to linger over with a good bottle of viognier.   Krub is designed for one thing only—providing enough caloric intake to row that boat out of the fjord.   

            Frankly, krub looks nasty.  Blame how it is made.  

When you look at a bowl of krub what you see is a large mass of gray, slippery, misshapen balls of boiled dough, each about the size of a baseball.  You corral one of these blobs on your plate, add a big pat of butter to dredge the bites in and have at it; cutting them up and shoveling them in as fasts as you can.  It is every Norwegian for himself at a krub feast, and, while you may have started dinner with grace, after that the only rule is you have to keep one foot on the floor.  As a child, if I ate any fewer than three of these dense balls of carbohydrate mother assumed I was ill. 

Carbohydrate is the main—virtually the only—ingredient in krub.  You start with about eight cups of grated potatoes, add one cup of flour, an egg to hold it all together, and a good handful of salt. You stir this mash together in a huge bowl (a farmer’s wife bowl: wooden or crockery if you can find it) until it sticks together like paste.  Flour your hands and start forming the krub into balls.  At the very last minute you fold in a tiny bit of bacon (no need to waste good protein on a starch ball you know) and then ease the ball into a boiling cauldron of water.

The ball will sink to the bottom of the boiling pot.  But, just like a dead body, it will rise to the surface when “ripe.”  Then is when it is added to the collective serving bowl and the family of Norwegians gather like slavering beasts.   What is not consumed that night will be sliced and fried in butter and cream the next day—and this, too, is wonderful eating. 

Lent is a good family time of year.  Enjoy a little ethnic cuisine, but it won’t be as good as krub.  Keep the faith.