Multekrem, Revisited

It had been nearly four years since I wrote about cloudberries and the Norwegian dessert, multekrem, on this very blog. It was time to revisit the subject.

Multekrem

Multekrem

I would run into my towering Norwegian pal Pål (with the cool little bubble over the “a”) over the intervening years at school. Pål had brought polar cloudberries that his parents had smuggled in frozen from Norway to our house for dinner, and I was smitten. The cloudberries, folded into whipped cream, became multekrem — one of the most heavenly flavors ever. (Appealing, perhaps, to my northern DNA…) The salmon-colored cream would often enter my head for no reason at all, like a beautiful song from the past. More

Far Away, So Local

I have a dour Norwegian pal from the North Pole named, coincidentally, Pål. (Pronounced “Paul”.) He’s about 7 feet tall and I knew him sometime before I ever saw him smile. He’s actually got a good sense of humor, and will laugh heartily when you get him going. But he’s just as likely to get teary telling you about the time back home when they watched a reindeer dying outside the living room window.

I had Pål and his now ex-wife (from Ireland) over for dinner one time. I can’t remember what I cooked — hopefully I didn’t try to be clever and make him Norwegian food (“You ever had lutefisk like that before, Pål!??”) When we have guests for dinner and they ask what they can bring, I’ll often suggest dessert — it’s not my favorite dish to prepare and that’s one less thing I have to think about. I will never forget what Pål brought us for dessert. More