Finnish Macaroni and Beef

When I was a District Exchange Officer for Rotary districts in Minnesota and Wisconsin, I helped coordinate exchanges for students coming to our area from Finland and students from Minnesota and Wisconsin going to Finland.  It was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot.  For instance, I learned right away why Finnish students were amused by Minnesota’s slogan, “The land of 10,000 lakes.”  Finland has over 187,000 lakes!

Once a year my wife and I invited the exchange Students from Finland in our Rotary Districts to spend a weekend at our home.  Since the students were living in cities that could be more than 100 miles apart, we tried to make the weekend an opportunity for students to get better acquainted.

The rules were simple.  Students could speak Finnish as much as they wished.  My wife cooked Friday dinner and I made breakfast Saturday and Sunday.  The students could make whatever they wanted for lunch and dinner Saturday and a final snack at Sunday noon.  My job was to get the ingredients they needed.

We had a lot of fun together and enjoyed many of their favorite recipes, some of which had been sent via airmail from mothers and grandmothers in Finland.

One popular dish nearly every year was Lihamakaronilaatikko (Lee-hah-mah-cah-row-nee-lah-tee-ko), which is a Finnish version of a macaroni and hamburger hot dish.  Instead of a tomato-based sauce with mixed vegetables,  a cream sauce.   This is comfort food for a cold winter evening.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups uncooked macaroni
1 lb. ground beef
1 large onion
1 T vegetable oil
2 cups milk
3 eggs
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/2  cup grated Swiss or Jack cheese
1/4 cup bread crumbs
3 T. butter

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Finely chop the onion . Heat the oil in a saucepan and brown the ground beef over moderate heat.  When the meat is nearly done, add the onion and continue cooking until the onion is translucent.  Season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon white pepper.   Drain the meat if necessary.

Boil the macaroni in salted water until a bit more than half cooked.  Drain the macaroni and mix it with the beef, then pour the mixture into a greased oven casserole.

Grate the cheese and beat the eggs until they are lemon yellow.  Add the milk, grated cheese 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon white pepper.  Mix well and pour over the macaroni-beef mixture.  Sprinkle with bread crumbs and add a few small pieces of butter on the surface.  Cover and cook at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, remove the cover and continue cooking for another half hour or until the batter has set.

NOTES.  Like many other Scandinavian dishes, this is a white mildly spiced dish.  Ketchup is the condiment of choice, so put the ketchup bottle on the table when you serve Lihamakaronilaatikko.  Some versions are made with beef broth, but our student guests preferred this recipe.

Black Walnut Fudge

In a good year for hazelnuts we kids picked buckets of the greenish pods from the shrubs in our woods and left the nuts to dry on the workbench in the garage.  It was a race with the red squirrels who also relished them.  We used to find piles of empty hazelnut shells on old stumps and fallen trees where squirrels had eaten their fill.

Wild hazelnuts are smaller and have thicker shells than the hazelnuts sold in stores today, so we used Dad’s bench vise to crack the tough shells.  We never collected a lot of the finished product, but it was enough for the fudge Mom made for Christmas.

By the mid 1950’s she had discovered the magic of marshmallow cream and the convenience of packaged walnuts, so Christmas fudge became “Never Fail Fudge” with English walnuts, and the hazelnut harvest ended in the Rang family.  The fudge was easy to make and still tasted delicious, so no one complained.

However, around that same time I fell in love with black walnut fudge.  We didn’t have any black walnut trees near us in Hayward, but we did have aunts and uncles who lived in Indiana and Nebraska where black walnuts were free for the picking.

One of those uncles brought us our first bag of black walnuts, black round nuts so hard that they bounced on the concrete floor.  I remember that Dad showed me how to crack them with the vise and gave me the job of separating the nutmeats from the tough shells.

Until you have tackled that job you will not believe how well God protected black walnuts from people.  You can drive a car over a black walnut without breaking the shell.  In fact, an old gentleman in Charlottesville, Virginia taught me how to remove the husks from black walnuts by doing just that.

He also warned me about the dark pigment in the husks and explained how to dry and cure the nuts.  The husks contain an indelible dye that leaves purple stains on skin, clothes, and porch railings.

Unlike people, squirrels have no trouble getting the meat out of black walnuts  They loved to sit on our car when they ate the nuts.  If the husks were not washed off within an hour or two the damage was done.  I could still see the dark blotches when we sold the car years later.

Last year a member of our church contributed a jar of black walnuts he had shelled to the mission sale table.   I used some of them to make a date pudding and stored the rest in the freezer for fudge this Christmas.

This is basically the same recipe that Mom used for her “Never Fail Fudge”.  The major difference is that she always used semi-sweet chocolate chips while I used bittersweet chips with 60% cacao for a more intense chocolate flavor.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 12 oz. package bittersweet chocolate chips
1 jar (about 7 oz.) marshmallow cream
1/2 cup chopped black walnuts
1 tsp. vanilla
Small amount of butter to grease the pan

PROCEDURE:

Before cooking the candy, chop the nuts coarsely and butter a baking pan.  Either a 7 x 11 inch glass baking dish or a 9 x 13 aluminum cake pan will work.  Make sure that the vanilla and a measuring spoon are ready.

Combine the sugar, salt, butter and milk in a heavy two to three-quart saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly.  Continue boiling over medium heat until a candy thermometer reaches 234° F., stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Remove from the heat.

Stir in the chocolate chips until melted. Add the marshmallow cream, nuts and vanilla. Beat until well blended. Pour the candy into the buttered pan and spread with a spatula.

Cool at room temperature. Cut into squares and store in a closed container in a cool place or the refrigerator

NOTES:  This recipe makes about three pounds.  When the candy is nearing a boil, I like to cover the pan for a couple of minutes to make sure that all the sugar has dissolved in the steam.  This seems to keep the fudge from developing sugar crystals as it cools.

English walnuts and hazelnuts work fine too, but black walnuts give a unique flavor that really complements the chocolate.