Bjørg lager Rognbollesuppe / Guohpparmális

- "People used to be creative, mixing meat with roe to give it flavour and make it edible. There wasn't the abundance we have today," says Bjørg Eline Fossli from Manndalen. Here is her recipe for roe ball soup.

Rye buns

2 tablespoons lightly cooked oatmeal
3 parts wheat flour
Onion in small pieces
Dried meat in small pieces
5 - 6 dl roe
A little pepper

I use to mix oatmeal into the bun, because when the oatmeal boils, it eats out. This makes the bun more porous. If I don't have a lot of roe, I can add a little cream to soften the roe.

Soup power

Water
Marrow bones and dried meat
Carrot in cubes
Diced potato

Use a spoon to mould small balls to be placed in the soup stock. You must first test boil the soup. Then you drop one or two balls into the boiling water. If the dumplings dissolve when you drop them in, you need to stir a little more flour into the dough and try again. It should boil all the way through while the buns are there. If it stops boiling, you have to wait before dropping in more buns. After ten minutes, the bun can be eaten. When all the buns are done, add the carrots and potato to the broth with the buns and leave to cook for thirty minutes.

I remember that my mum had a huge barrel of roe standing there. Then you could go and take the roe ball as candy. Just the ball. There were eight of us siblings, so the pile of buns was huge. I can still picture it. Yes, the roe bun was an everyday food, there wasn't much variation. It was like the boy said: «We ate fish six days a week and on Sunday we had oysters.»
People used to be creative, mixing meat with roe to give it flavour and make it edible. There wasn't the abundance we have today. Now half of it is thrown away. When we were young, we had to take out the sheep's small intestine. Because there's fat around the intestines. They used the fat to make soap. Because there was so little soap to be had. During the war it was particularly bad. There was no lather in the soap, so they stood and boiled large pots of soap. The sheep's lungs were salted and dried, and then they put it in the meat soup. When the lungs were cooked, it was just like the balloon mould that was in the food. They also used everything on the fish. What they didn't use for human food, they cooked for animals. They had a big pot in the barn that they boiled grass and put fish waste in. They utilised everything before ten years ago.

Bjørg Eline Fossli's recipe. From the book «Seven varieties - Stories from the kitchen counter«, by Reni Jasinski Wright.