Several years ago during a September stopover in Oslo, the hotel sent a copy of Aftenposten to the room along with breakfast. Aftenposten, Norway’s leading newspaper, is published in Norwegian, of course, and since my Norwegian was limited to about 50 words, the best I could do was to decipher captions and look at pictures. But enclosed in that day’s edition was a copy of Mat fra Norge, the newspaper’s food magazine with a rustic apple tart on the cover and a caption which read “Eplefest.”
I knew enough Norwegian to understand the magazine title meant “Food from Norway” and I could recognize three of the words in its tag line “Inspirasjon… Kultur— Oppskrifter… Historie.” Oppskrifter, I later learned, meant “Recipes.” Using linguistic cognates, I could see the magazine also had articles on freshwater fish, 48 hours in Bergen, Norway’s first cookbook and the taste of chanterelles. Each article was accompanied by stunning photographic still lifes of the dishes. Even though I knew it was unlikely I would be able to read each article in full, I wanted to taste each recipe.
On the flight home, I studied the recipes but my Norwegian was too rudimentary for understanding some of the ingredients and how to incorporate them. It was a challenge that I was prepared to face, but work and life intervened, and this copy of Mat fra Norge was boxed with other trip memorabilia and forgotten for eight seasons. A few days ago, lo and behold, I found my box of Norwegian memories and there was Mat fra Norge, again tempting me with its pictures and recipes secreted in Norwegian.
Now it was time to face the challenge, and I looked for a short recipe. The rustic apple tart on the cover was calling to me, but the preparation instructions were detailed and probably too much challenge for my first effort in baking from a recipe written in Norwegian. I settled on a short pear cake recipe included in the same article to see if I could figure out the ingredients and accompanying instructions.
I had cooked in Europe for many years so I was comfortable with metric measures. The ingredients were easy to identify with the help of a dictionary, but I was stumped by the instructions. So I carefully typed the Norwegian text of the recipe, making sure diacritical marks were accurately copied and turned to Google Translate for assistance with the preparation instructions.
Rør smør og sukker hvitt. Tilsett ett tog ett egg. Sikt inn hvetemel or bakepulver. Hell røren i en smurt 22 cm springform. Strø over revet kransekakemasse. Del pærene i to, ta ut kjernehuset og trykk dem ned i kakedeigen. Stek kaken midt i ovnen på 175°C i ca. 35 minutter. Server med is eller pisket krem.
In seconds I had a literal English translation, but what a translation!
Cream butter and sugar. Add one train an egg. Aim flour or baking powder. Pour batter into a greased 22 cm springform. Sprinkle with grated almond paste. Share pears in half, remove the core and push them into the cake mixture. Bake in oven at 175 ° C for about 35 minutes. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.
Every other sentence was impossible to understand. I realized that some sentences in the baking instructions could be translated literally; others likely contained culinary idioms for which a-word-for-word literal translation produced nonsense. So I was on my own to figure out what was meant.
I decided to follow conventional baking practice of combining wet and dry ingredients separately and then together and it worked!
The cake turned out beautifully using my adaptation of the recipe.* It had the taste of marzipan and a moist crumb. The pears were well-baked but still juicy. “A hit,” my husband declared after several pieces.
But judge for yourselves. It is easy to assemble and bakes in 35-45 minutes.
Experimenting with this recipe taught me several dozen Norwegian culinary terms. Now I am emboldened to explore other recipes in my treasured copy of Mat fra Norge and in more recent editions available on-line which I will share with you in future posts.
Norwegian Pear Cake
3.5 oz (100 g) butter
¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (2 dl; 160 g) sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ cups (3dl; 240 g) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 poached pears, 6 pear halves (see recipe below)
3 ¼ oz (100g) almond paste, grated
1 teaspoon almond extract, optional
Pinch salt
Pre-heat oven to 350°F (175°C)*.
Cream butter and sugar. Add one egg at a time to butter mixture until well incorporated.
In a separate bowl whisk together flour and baking powder and mix by tablespoon into butter mixture until no flour is visible. Pour batter in a buttered 9 in (22 cm) springform cake tin*, sprinkle top of dough with grated almond paste.
Remove pears from cooking liquid and wipe dry. Place pears on dough, cut side down and with narrow end toward center, equally spaced. Bake for about 35-45 minutes*, until puffed and almond paste is golden. Cool on rack.
Serve at room temperature with ice cream or whipped cream. Serves 8-10.
*Notes: I kept the ingredients and their proportions the same as in the published recipe. I used Red D’Anjou pears, but any almost ripe pears could be used. Otherwise I made the following changes: My almond meal was less flavorful than that usually available in Europe. So I added 1 teaspoon of almond extract and a pinch of salt to the dough. I used a 9 inch cake tin as I did not have a 22 cm cake tin ( 8.6 inches). The recommended baking temperature was 175°C which is 346°F, so I baked at 350°F. I found that baking for 35 minutes was not enough for a golden cake, so I increased the baking time to almost 45 minutes, watching the last ten minutes carefully so as not too burn the almond paste topping.
* * *
The article also included a recipe for preparing the pears. Here again the translation of the preparation instructions was garbled:
Boil all the ingredients for the brine. Peel the bulb (put them in a bowl of cold water with a little lemon so that the lamp does not turn brown before cooking). Have them over in the pan and let them pull the lid in 6 minutes. Set the pan aside and let the bulb lying in bed sheets until they are cold. Place a plate or plastic film over the bulb so that they are under the sheets. Have them over in a well-cleaned glass and pour the sheet over to cover the bulb.
Again the recipe was easy to figure out. The pears can be prepared following this recipe and refrigerated for several days before baking.
Poached pears
4 ¼ cups (1 L) water
1 vanilla bean, split in two
2 ⅛ cups (6 dl) sugar
1 cup (2 dl) dry white wine/cider
1 lemon, zest and juice
3 star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
2 ¼ lbs (1 kg) pears (about 8 pears)
Prepare poaching liquid by combining all ingredients except pears, bring to boil and then reduce to a simmer. Stir until the sugar is melted. Keep hot.
Peel and core pears (put them in a bowl of cold water with a little lemon to prevent browning before cooking). Transfer pears to pan, pour in hot poaching liquid to cover pears. Cover pan with lid and simmer for 6 minutes.
Remove pan from stove. Cover pears with plastic film and place a plate on top to keep the pears submerged in the poaching liquid. Let pears cool in pan.
Wash a jar and lid in boiling water. Transfer pears from pan to jar and pour poaching liquid until jar is full and pears are completely covered. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Note: You can also use purchased pears, canned in juice rather than in syrup, for this cake. To replicate the spicy flavor of the pears you should do the following: drain liquid from canned pears (you need 6 halves for the cake so you may need 2 cans of pears) into a saucepan. Add the spices indicated in the recipe: vanilla bean, sugar, lemon zest and juice, star anise, cinnamon to the liquid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and stir until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and cool. While liquid is cooling, place pears in a clean jar. Pour spiced liquid over the pears and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. Then proceed with making the cake as instructed above.
Photo credits: Slava Johnson