Raspeballer

The story

Raspeballer are dumplings of grated raw potato and flour, simmered in meat broth or salted water, and few Norwegian dishes have as many names. Store norske leksikon lists komle, kumle, kompe, klubb, klot, kjuke and potetball among them. The dish is most closely tied to Vestlandet, the fjord country of western Norway. On the south coast it is often called kompe, and in Nordland it is klubb, eaten with fried pork and syrup. The dumplings arrived with the potato. Around 1800 Norwegian farmers found that potatoes gave bigger and steadier harvests than grain, and they began stretching scarce flour with them. Older recipes use barley or oat flour; wheat flour came later. Some cooks hide a cube of salt pork in the middle, a version called komle med dott. On the plate, the gray dumplings sit beside lightly salted boiled mutton, pork or beef, smoked sausage, crisp bacon and mashed rutabaga, and some families add syrup, lingonberry jam or a sweet and salty brown-cheese sauce called duppe. Plan the meal around the pork hocks, which need about two hours, and grate the potatoes only when the broth is ready.