Lookin' for Lefse in all the Wrong Places

I first ate lefse as a child living in San Diego. In the mid-1960s, my parents visited Norway for three weeks and returned with a deepened appreciation for their cultural heritage, some years before most Americans went in search of their "roots."

One way my father expressed his awakened culture pride was through cooking special Norwegian dishes. One of these was lefse. Every year at Christmas, he would head into the kitchen and make up a large batch of mashed potatoes. The next day or so, he would haul out a huge electrical griddle and his lefse rolling pin and get to work, turning the potato mush into large disks of soft, pliable flatbread. Initially, I ate my lefse smeared with butter, sprinkled with sugar and rolled up. Soon I was copying the grownups and putting leftover turkey and dressing inside. I loved it.

My dad ceased the lefse-making when my mother became ill, and now he is gone too, and it has been almost 20 years since I've tasted good lefse. So I was looking forward to finding great lefse here in Oslo. I wasn't sure where to find it but was fairly confident that it would be a commonly sold item and would probablly be in all the grocery stores. In the first one we went into--it was a Rema 1000, I think. Or was it a Rimi? Or a Kiwi? No matter; they all carry the same things--I went directly to the bread aisle. Yep. Tons of lefse and many brands to choose from. I grabbed a package and handed it to Doug. He looked at the label, and handed the bag back to me, saying "This says lomper, not lefse." I looked again at all the packages. Indeed, they were all marked "lomper." (The "r" at the end of a Norwegian word signifies more than one. One piece of this stuff would be "lompe.")

 What the hell is lompe? I wondered. And more important,  where was my long-awaited lefse? Confused and embarrassed by my mistake, I wandered the store aisles, looking for lefse. Finally, in the cookie section, I came upon something labeled "lefse." 

It didn't look a thing like the flatbread my dad used to bake. It was in the shape of small rectangles that had been sandwiched together with an unidentifiable Something in between.

It didn't look right, but the spirit of adventure, we bought it anyway. The verdict:

BLECH!

Only Addie was willing to eat it. The bread was thick, sweet, moist and slightly mushy. Layered in between two the two pieces of this so-called lefse was a filling that Doug likened to vanilla frosting. I thought it tasted like shortening and corn syrup.

This lefse: NOT godt!

Disappointed, but not without hope, I continued to search grocery stores for lefse, always with the same result. Plenty of lomper, but no lefse. Then, in the cookie section of one of the stores, we found this.

At least this lefse looks thin. But nothing else about it seems right. It is square--a minor quibble. But if you shake the box, the product inside is clearly hard, like a cracker. And then there's the filling already inside the lefse. There seemed nothing left to do but to ask some Norwegians we know to explain. 

Norwegian #1: The difference between lompe and lefse is that lompe is made of potatoes and lefse is made with wheat flour. 

Me: But the lefse that I used to eat was made of potatoes.

 

Norwegian #2: Yes, that is right. Lefse can be made with potatoes. The real difference is that lefse is for dessert--you sprinkle sugar on it or spread it with jam. Lompe is for savory things--like fish or meat. It is very popular as a substitute for a hotdog bun.

Me: But we always ate our lefse either way!

 

Norwegian #1: Yes, you can do that. But lompe is thin and round. Lefse is thick and square.

Me (to myself): But what about the thin, round lefse that I used to eat? Was I really eating lompe and not lefse?

An extensive web search did not clear up the confusion, although I draw some comfort from the information on one site that suggested that there are different styles of lefse and that the prevalence of one over another is regional. We are in the eastern part of Norway and it is supposedly in the western part where the lefse I knew as a child is popular.

Yesterday, when we went to the store, I bought lomper. It was just okay. It didn't taste like lefse to me. Too dry. Too thin. Not enough potato flavor. Guess I will have to learn how to make my own. Lefse, not lompe.