Spell Casting with Potato

My mother transformed her kitchen every Christmas into a haven for Norwegian pastry magic. She baked krumkaka, yulekaka ("kaka" in our language means cake) and my favorite, leftse. Leftse is a pastry made from potatoes, rolled out so thin you could read a newspaper through it and baked on a giant round electric griddle. A delicate process. Any tear in the dough means an instant do over. But if you re-roll the dough too many times, it ends up tough and dry. I did not appreciate how skilled my mom was at this aspect to the art until I tasted bad leftsa. Thick as cardboard. Like eating stacked communion wafers. For my mom, making leftse was a kind of meditation. Mashing the potatoes and making the dough. Rolling out the circle of dough, moving it quickly and expertly onto the griddle with long flat sticks. On the griddle, which is dusted with flour, the leftse bakes for a minute until brown freckles appear and then it is flipped. Burning the lefse while rolling out the next piece is another hazard and requires acute attention, being present in the moment. Once finished, baked and cooled, my mother buttered the lefse. Sprinkled on cinnamon sugar. Rolled the leftse into a cigar-sized log. Then cut the log into delicious bite-size pieces. The night of the leftsa making was one of my mother's loved rituals, a spell-casting with potato.