My Grandmother’s Lefse
There’s nothing like lefse.
That’s not strictly true, of course. In fact, there are many desserts and flatbreads that could broadly be described as “like” the thin Norwegian delicacy — crepes, tortillas, naan — but none quite match lefse’s when it comes to combining utter simplicity with understated elegance. Unremarkable and unassuming in appearance, it’s a surprisingly sophisticated dish ideally suited to the stern-faced and stolid Norwegian immigrants who brought it to this country more than a century ago.
Traditionally made from just riced potatoes, butter, cream and sugar, lefse’s secret isn’t in its ingredients but its delicate preparation, a painstaking and fraught process that involves a large griddle, a long wooden stick and (usually) a very old Scandinavian woman. In my memory that woman is my grandmother Caroline, whose lefse used to arrive at our home in Alaska via the mail and wrapped in wax paper; it had to be hidden immediately to prevent me and my brothers (or our friends) from devouring it on the spot.
She once showed my brothers and I how to prepare it, a mesmerizing process that seemed both easy and incomprehensible at the same time. With just an imperceptible flick of her wrist, my grandma was able to manipulate the impossibly thin dough as it quickly cooked to a perfect consistency — somehow both pliable and papery, with splotches of light brown speckled across the white bread like spots on a milk cow.
There are several ways to eat lefse, but as best I can tell the simpler the final preparation the better. I remember my grandpa and uncles liking it with butter only, but my brothers and dad always liked it buttered and topped with cane sugar, then rolled cigar-like. The taste is something almost earthy and intoxicating, with the potatoes imparting a satisfying umami that meshes seamlessly with the creaminess of the butter and the granular sweetness of the sugar into a complexity of flavor that doesn’t seem possible from such a white-bread concoction of basic ingredients.
I think part of lefse’s allure is its connection to tradition and old ways of doing things. My grandma used to spend hours preparing the treat, lovingly flipping the dough just as she’d been taught by her mother back when they used to take horses to town. It’s the kind of simple preparation that likely came in handy back in those days, when potatoes were plentiful but not much else came easy to the immigrant farmers who brought the dish to this country. It’s one of those ethnic dishes that seem almost baked into the fabric of the people who brought it here, and in my grandma’s case I’m sure some of the ingredients eventually managed to soak their way into the wrinkles of her skin.
She died today, at 93 years old.
The last year of her life was tougher than it should have been, and I think she was ready to rest. She outlived her husband, two of her children and most of her friends. It was time. She survived the hardness of the 30s, held down the home front during the 40s, built a family during the 50s and 60s and for the past half-century devoted much of the rest of her life to serving others. She was a bedrock member of her church and hometown who delivered meals to “the old timers” in her community well into her own golden years.
I was lucky enough to go to college close to my grandparents, and over Thanksgiving during my freshman year I arrived at my grandparents’ doorstep with four of my buddies in tow. My grandma shoveled food into us until we were ready to burst, then topped us off with a series of cakes, pies and — of course — lefse that left us in a bewildered state of satisfied, woozy gluttony. I think we ate leftovers in the dorm for a month.
When she turned 90 a couple years back, we held a birthday party for her at the senior center in the small town of Mayville, North Dakota where she spent nearly every day of her life. It seemed like half the town turned out to wish her well, and the stories they told were invariably about her vast capacity for kindness and a nearly limitless energy that she always directed toward sharing goodness — it didn’t matter if it was stitching Christmas quilts for her grandkids, cooking for a small army of college dudes or baking holiday cookies for elderly shut-ins, if there was someone who needed a lift, she was going to do whatever she could to pick them up.
That’s an enormous amount of strength for a woman who probably didn’t weigh 100 pounds, but that was my grandma Caroline — a generous and self-sacrificing woman who used every day of her life to fill the world with kind works, charity and good deeds.
And the best lefse in the world.
