Grandma's lutefisk sauce

 This is really the only sauce that I've ever had on lutefisk.  I don't have a refined recipe for sauce for two reasons.  First, I was quite young when I watched Grandma.  I had been dropped off at her house while my parents went about some other business where my presence wasn't needed (Holiday party, Christmas shopping, etc.)  I remember that she found out that she didn't have enough butter so it was off to the grocery store just for butter.   Butter is one of the main ingredients.

The other reason that I don't have a written recipe is that Grandma didn't usually use written recipes, and when she did, they were not for sharing.  She once told me that when people asked her for her recipes, she usually left out one special ingredient.  "Why would you give the competition your secrets?"  She would only trade.  Every holiday season she would trade her pecan divinity for the neighbor's pickled salmon.  Neither would exchange their recipes.  Now, unfortunately, both recipes are lost.  I remember how sad it was seeing a big plate of divinity go out the back door, but that was all forgotten when she came back with a quart of pickled salmon.

Back to our lutefisk sauce.  As with the lutefisk recipe, the amount of ingredients for the sauce depends on the amount of lutefisk.  Generally, here is how it works. The sauce is a basic roux.  Grandma would start with 2 sticks of butter and a pound of flour, but that was to prepare enough for lots of people stopping by over course of the evening.  For our purposes, we will start with 1/2 cube of butter.  Melt it in a pan turned on medium.  When it starts to bubble, add 3 tablespoons of flour (Wondra flour is best).  Cook that a bit to make a loose roux, but make sure that you cook it long enough (about 5 minutes) to remove the flour flavor from the flour.  Don't be afraid to brown the flour a little bit, in fact, that is good.  But when that happens, toss in two tablespoons of ground allspice and a 1/8 teaspoon of very finely ground white pepper.  Stir it in and remove from the heat.

Grandma always said that the freshness of the spices is one of the cooking secrets that people ignore.  Every year just before the holidays she would throw out the "old" spices and buy new ones (at least all of her "holiday" spices).  For pepper, she liked white pepper for the lutefisk sauce.  Now, back to our story.

You have now made a roux with allspice as part of the thickening agent.  Yes, that is a lot of allspice.  This spice is generally used as just one of many (like in pumpkin pie or Swedish meatballs, where it is also mixed with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, etc.)  But just plain allspice, and lots of it, really can carry its weight as a substitute for mixture of all those other spices.  And there isn't any chance of too much cloves, nutmeg, etc. because there isn't any.  Even the little zing from the white pepper is masked by the allspice.

Allspice is a "new world" spice, probably first encountered by Europeans when Columbus landed in the West Indies.  It is one of the main spices for Jamaican jerk recipes.  The other holiday spices mentioned above are mostly from Asia and were around Europe for centuries before allspice.  What does that mean to us?  Well, for centuries lutefisk was certainly not eaten with a sauce made from allspice.  Combining allspice with lutefisk is relatively nuevo cuisine.  Grandma's sauce would be considered a new-fangled recipe to a lutefisk historian or professor of lutefiskology.

Now back to the sticky mess in the pan.  We have taken it off the heat and let it cool down a little.  We have a choice now of adding whole milk, half and half, or cream.  I personally think that cream makes the sauce too rich.  Whole milk is enough for me.  Add 3/4 cup of milk and stir it into the roux.  Mix it up good.  You don't have to get all the little lumps out.  Put it back on low heat and keep stirring.  When all the lumps are gone, you can turn the heat up. 

The finished sauce.  This stove is a dual wood/electric.  You can see the electric coil glowing red hot under the pot of water on the right.  That is to heat up the lutefisk. 

It will soon start to thicken.  Keep the milk handy and if it gets too thick you can add a couple of tablespoons.  Don't be afraid to make it quite thick.  The boiled lutefisk tends to hold some water.  If the sauce is too loose, the moisture from the lutefisk will water down the sauce and make it too runny.  Better to have it quite thick, almost like a paste, in my opinion.

There isn't any reason to add salt as Grandma always used salted butter.  There was a salt shaker on the table for those who thought more salt was an improvement.  As the sauce sits around over the afternoon and evening (if a large batch is made), when uncles and cousins showed up a touch of milk and a re-heat was all that necessary.  The lutefisk goes in the boiling water, the sauce is heated up, and in 10 minutes the guests were treated to the finest of Scandinavian cuisine.

For how to get your tørrfisk to this stage, you can read the blog on how to prepare lutefisk.

Yes, the color of the sauce is weird.  Like lutefisk itself, it probably isn't for those who whine about not having ice cubes for their soda pop or having to eat whole wheat bread.  On the plus side, those people can go watch TV in the other room while the adults enjoy their lutefisk in the company of the enlightened.

Yes, there are bones in it.  Another reason for some to whimper about lutefisk.  But the bones are why lutefisk is the original "finger slikar got."

I've made myself hungry again.

Feel free to leave additional recipes for lutefisk preparation or sauces.