Did your mother or grandmother make primost?
Mine did, but the rest of the family didn't like it. We never bothered to find out what she did to create a soft spread that resembled caramel icing but tasted nothing, nothing like caramel.
When we eventually bought Gjetost cheese I always thought it was a version of Primost. Similar in colour and flavour but not in texture.
Recently I found myself enjoying a bit of Gjetost. An acquired taste, apparently.
(Tip - It is good on well buttered open-faced bread with a few thin cucumbers slices (twisted)on top.)
Gjetost has goat's milk, primost is made from cow's milk. We did not have a goat but we did have a good milk cow. Mom made butter and maybe she used the whey to make her primost and she added cream. It had a smooth, if a bit grainy, texture. Sour, maybe a bit bitter, slightly sweet, not like cheese at all. I recall Mom now, relishing every mouthful.
Why I thought about primost for the first time in over fifty years is beyond me. I'm troubled since this is one of the many questions I neglected to ask. How do you make primost mom and why do you like it so much? Do you enjoy the Gjetost as much as primost?
Yes, mom cooked Norwegian. Not all the time of course but we had a Norwegian dish at least once a month.
The regularity may have faded out a bit once we moved to town and no longer had access to unpasteurised milk, cream, buttermilk and a good supply of Norwegian neighbours. As we associated more with whoever happened to be our neighbours, work or school colleagues we kind of drifted away from the Norwegian dishes - still the odd time she made klubb and we loved it. Always at Christmas we had lutefisk and lefse and meatballs in gravy.
She very rarely made milk porridge (my absolute favourite with cinnamon and sugar - a meal fit for a queen and my favourite supper) anymore. It has a name but I have to look up the spelling we called it grout - but the name usually used is something like romagrotte. I'll doctor this up later. The kind I've had at cultural fairs is different from mom's. I don't think she ever used sour cream and we didn't put butter on top.
We put sour cream on top of our pancakes - try it you will like it - for a modern touch I also have used plain yogurt. Pancake, butter, sour cream, phony maple syrup or jam - delicious.
Mom's phony maple syrup - brown sugar, maple flavouring, water, a bit of flour to thicken, heat to a gentle boil, add the maple flavouring last, serve. I still make this by the way.
She also made fruit soup, we ate it with thick cream on top, very good. Such a long time ago. Everything changed when we no longer had a dairy cow - the most luscious cream - better than devonshire cream.
So over time I am going to post family recipes, I will check with cousins to see if they have the primost recipe. And other old time recipes that came with our grandparents from Norway in the late 1800s. Peasant food adapted to the prairies. Some of it was viking food.
I think flatbread, which apparently keeps for years and spikachit, should be on hand in case of disaster. If I had a tsunami kit those two foods would be involved. The Norwegian equivalent to bannock and pemmican. Or maybe the forerunners of crackers and beef jerky. So if my relatives would send those recipes I could have a survival kit. I live on the west coast people - does anybody care? No, they have that independant streak, every man for himself. Must have been an American view, passed on as muscle memory. Take pride in doing every thing yourself. Help shows you are weak. Need help? Weak and beyond redemption.
May I remind you that our ancestors came to North America and first settled where they knew people and formed a community of Norwegian immigrants who hopefully helped each other out. They encouraged other relatives to come to the new world - whether they meant that as hey, come over, you will be successful here, or hey, misery loves company I don't know.
Nobody raised sheep or lamb in our district and the fishing was sketchy, no lake nearby, or even river. So yes the recipes were adapted to the prairies.
I do know how to make gravlax though and a great mustard sauce to go along with it. I'll put those recipes in as my contribution. Nice if you have ready access to fresh salmon.
Note - Prim is in the stores in Norway -
http://www.tine.no/merkevarer/tine-prim/produkter/tine-prim
Also here you can see a nice picture of primost on bread. (looks much like peanut butter).
Yes immigrants bring traditions that are frozen in time. The home country moves on, changes, but the immigrants pass down their memories of food from the time and circumstances they left. We're talking about homesteaders here, not the nobility.
Primost cheese is, as I remembered it, available from an Uptown Scandinavian store on Lake Street just south of downtown Minneapolis. And that store is fantastic, it is like an old fashioned mercantile store. It has food, meats, clothing, books, art, etc. and it occupies something like one fourth of a block or more in Uptown Mpls. The spread that we made from their prim of 6 oz was to thin slice the prim in a cooking pan with a half a cup of milk and a half a cup of sugar. Heat the mixture stirring often (to keep it from getting sugary) until it is a consistency that seems to your liking, let it cool.
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