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      Norwegian buffet ~ sylte

      17th December 

      I love baking and making cookies, I enjoy
      Sytle, Norwegian cold cut of meat
      cake making and playing with different desserts BUT we cannot live on sweet alone.  I felt it time to share some traditional savoury Norwegian dishes with you and today the first one up would be perfect for a Boxing Day buffet, that is when we are going to be eating our pressed herb pork roll, or as they say in one word in Norwegian: sylte 





      Sytle
      A note on timing:
      The pork needs to cook for two hours before pressing for 24 hours and then leaving in brine to soak until needed.


      You will need:

      pork belly without bone
      salt
      pepper
      ginger
      whole cloves  
      string
      a press if you have one, if not a couple of loaf tins and heavy weights

      

      METHOD 1

      1  If the piece of meat has too much fat on the outer edge, trim it down a bit.

      2  Boil in water with 2 tbsp. salt in per 1 litre used.  Fast boil for five minutes, thereafter simmer for two hours.
      

      
      Meat ready to boil and simmer for 2 hours

        3  Remove meat from the water and leave to cool for about 20 minutes.

      
      Meat ready for a rub of spices


      4  Rub in a generous amount of salt, pepper and ginger into the meat, these flavours are important so do not be stingy.
       
      
      Salt, pepper and ginger rubbed in

      5  This next bit may require two sets of hands.  Roll the meat up as tight as you possibly can into a roll shape and tie string around it.  you will need to do this a few times to hold the roll in shape.

       
      
      Roll the meat as tightly as you can


      
      Add string to secure the meat

      6  Cover the rolled meat in a clean old tea towel as tightly as possible.


      Cover tightly in a clean old tea towel

      7  Place the meat in the press if you have one for 24 hours.  If not place the meat in a loaf tine, with a second tin pressed down on top of it and weighted down with as much weight as possible.  Remember we are trying to 'press' the meat.

       
      
      Leave to press for 24 hours

      8  After 24 hours remove the meat from the tea towel and it should now look very squashed.  This is good.  Place whole cloves into the skin of it to increase flavour.  

      
      Once pressed the meat should look flattened

      
      Push in whole cloves into the skin for added flavour

      At this point the meat could be sliced and used as cold cut, or alternatively to keep it for a while in a container full of brine  (for each litre of water used add 75 g salt plus 2 bay leaves regardless of the amount of water, boil the water until the salt has dissolved, allow to cool before adding in the meat.) When ready to use, remove the meat from the brine, pat dry as use as normal.  The meat can stay in the brine for up to 14 days.  you do need to keep checking the water daily, should it turn white, then change the brine for fresh brine water.

      METHOD 2  -  I will do this next time.

      Instead of boiling the meat whole, the less messy option would be to rub in the spices and salt immediately and roll up the meat with string BEFORE boiling and simmering for 2 hours. 


      
      Sytle sitting in brine ready to be eaten at the Boxing Day buffet

      ♥  What do you eat on Boxing Day?  

      6 comments:

      1. Cold turkey and ham, bubble and squeak, chutney and pickled onions, and coleslaw - followed with a cup of tea and Christmas cake! That is what we have!! Except this year it will be another roast dinner - pork this time. I hope that I will get my bubble and squeak sometime!! xx

        ReplyDelete
        Replies
        1. Ooh I LOVE bubble and squeak. Even like the sound of the name. We too have it but it has been way too long since last time. Think we may try and squeeze it in on Boxing Day too. Thanks.

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      2. Our boxing day is back to normal food as we keep our Christmases pretty frugal. It's a roast duck with veggies fom the garden for Christmas Eve (my husbands mother is German). Christmas morning we have something special for breakfast like croissants or pancakes (gluten free), lunch one year and like to be repeated is duck pancakes using up most of the leftover meat and the leftover pancake mix from breakfast and dinner is a salad from the garden with any leftover meat. The duck will be home raised this year too. By Boxing Day there is precious little in the way of leftovers to eat so it's "back to normal viewing". :)

        ReplyDelete
        Replies
        1. I love that you use veg from the garden on Christmas Eve. My then my vegetable plot is bare. I am not very good at all year round food producing. It is something I need to give more consideration. One year I did actually grow my own Brussels sprouts for Christmas. For me that took a lot of forward planning. Love duck too. Your normal eating sounds delicious to me x

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      3. I wish we had boxing day here. Your recipe today reminds me of the Danish rollepulse my grandma used to make. It was delicious. I've enjoyed reading all your Christmas recipes you have shared. I just posted my recipe for Danish pebernodder. Scandinavian food is the best. Have a Merry Christmas.

        ReplyDelete
        Replies
        1. Ooh love the Danish pebernoder if they are what I think they are. Will pop over and look. Thanks. Yes this is very like a rullepolser. Glad you are enjoying the blog at the moment. I N enjoying all the Christmas postings too. X

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      I will always read all comments and will try to reply but it may take me a couple of days, do please pop back and lets get a conversation going...