Julebord
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19 December 2020
I should probably stop telling people the first time I saw pinnekjøtt that I thought they were dog treats. Meat on the bone desiccated and sold outside the cooler often on an endcap. You can forgive my misunderstanding. Norway is a country of mountains and fjord and is the Vestland we have a lot of sheep. People wear their wool to stay warm on the rainy winter nights and the rainy summer days. And the sheep meat salted or smoked is a delicacy served at Christmas - the yuletide - at Julebord. Last night was my second Julebord - the Christmas meal one has with workmates - and you'll have to forgive me for my first was a potluck mostly with expats so I was not up on many the traditions. It was a learning experience with sword, cigar, and suit.
Andreas and Erland have been talking about it for some time. We had a combined one for SeaSmart and Optimeering Aqua. In the fishfarming industry you'd have thought they might have gone for the lutefisk, one of the three possible main courses, but it was pinnekjøtt instead. So I still haven't tasted lutefisk or ribbe (the porcine option). Pinnekjøtt literally means "stick meat", and depending on who you ask this is either because it is traditionally steamed on sticks or because the bones are like sticks. It must be soaked for a day beforehand to remove the salt and then cooked for four hours, but prepared well it's quite delicious. Andreas steamed it atop potatoes in lieu of sticks he couldn't really gather at his apartment, so we had those with the meal as well.
Here it's probably a good time to digress a bit about the importance of saus in the norsk cuisine. With meat and potatoes a sort of gravy is expected and if it is not present there will be comments. I've made this mistake on occasion being the gauche American I am, and still haven't really gotten great at making it. If a game meat such as reindeer or moose is served it's also common to have tyttebær preserves, which are something like cranberries. Andreas, however, did not have saus - a circumstance I thoroughly enjoyed, especially when the Norwegians commented on it.
The Julebord is typically a formal event, my first experience notwithstanding. I discovered this first when asking Andreas what I could bring. He assured me that it was all taken care of and I all I needed to bring was myself and my suit. My suit? I questioned. I've not worn anything other than jeans and t-shirts or flanels to work for years. If I dress up it generally means getting out a Hawaiian shirt. I think I look good in them and they're festive, but apparently not appropriate here. Mind you, Andreas is telling me this the day before the party. So yesterday I went by Fretex (the Salvation Army store) and picked something up. I still haven't managed to shake my childish aversion to dressing up, but I suffered through. Also odd that one wears dress shoes. Inside. Normally Norwegians are religious about removing shoes at the door, but for a dress up event like this the shoes stay on. There are so many little cultural differences.
So yes, I still brought a bottle of wine along. I thought a Chianti would pair nice with the pinnekjøtt, but Andreas said thank you and I never saw it again. Apparently opening a bottle brought is not what they do - I learned it's taken as a gift that they'll open later and appreciate. Hopefully it wasn't taken as an assessment that he would not be well stocked. Andreas went out to buy beer after that before the other guests arrived. I probably missed half a dozen other things I don't even realize.
So dinner was delicious. Andreas is a smoker so I brought myself a Cuban to join him outside, but unfortunately it got a bit soggy in the rain. Truls similarly brought cigarettes even though he is also not a habitual smoker. It was nice adjorn there at points just the three of us and have a bit more intimate conversation. Generally at julebord one is expected not to talk about work, and we mostly did a pretty good job. Between the beer and the prosecco and the akvavit and the wodka we were all quite loquacious by evenings end. Truls, being the Medieval combat enthusiast got out a sword and I managed to put a hole in the ceiling at which point it was time to go.
I'm looking forward to next year...
