17. Beef Lindstrom (Swedish Beef Patties)

Second meal. This is the dish where I pre-made the beef patties while chilling the dough for the Medaillons.

Non sequitur:  I lost the Oscar ™ bet. We were tied but I picked Annette Bening over Natalie Portman. Will someone just give Mrs. Warren Beatty her goddamn Oscar ™ already? Annette was really good in her role, but it was a supporting role–not a lead one and perhaps if she had been in the supporting category she would’ve beaten that bizarre Melissa Leo lady. Long story short: I will be cooking the Ham with Raisin Sauce on Sunday.

Oh, another tangent: I retrieved Brian the cat from the Harrisburg Humane Society yesterday. Please don’t judge that I drove 90 miles for a cat. Brian had a lovely online profile, we met, we clicked, and we adopted. It’s like eHarmony. This is my equivalent of those childless yuppies going to China to adopt orphans. Brian has spent most, if not all, of his time under the bed between our linens and a Tupperware ™ container of holiday decorations. But he has used the litter tray, so that’s a win.

Ok, back to the Beef Lindstrom. I don’t know what makes this dish particularly Swedish. The beets? I dunno. This recipe consists of ground beef, beets, potato and onion. Is this somehow a smorgasbord interpreted via hamburger?

I purposely chose this dish because of my time restraints. Due to yesterday’s preparation of the patties, there is little left to do. Just browning the patties, cooking the vegetables (although this mix is cauliflower, carrot and broccoli) and frying the eggs.

There is no preparation involved with the Pumpernickel and butter (although it’s light butter and I bought the cute cocktail loaf). And when I made the Medallions on Sunday, I put jelly (the low-sugar strawberry Smuckers) instead of custard on four of them and I think that qualifies as “fruit tarts.”

I also added a cocktail to this meal. I call it the IKEA. It’s vodka + soda + ice + lingonberry drink concentrate to taste. It’s that stuff you can buy in the Swedish food store right before you leave IKEA. Honestly, the lingonberry was the only way to make this meal at all Swedish. They are yummy and match the jammy fruit tarts.

So basically all I did for this dinner was brown the patties, microwave the veggies, and fry the eggs. Voila! This one definitely got finished in less than an hour.

Here are the comparison photos:

I think that my version captured the essence of the original. I even got the pumpernickel in there.

Now for the review: Oddly enough this was unexpectedly good! It had a really nice, meatloaf-type texture but wasn’t overly dry and needed a gravy, like so many meatloafs do. And this meal is really low-carb (if you’re into that thing). The only carbs are the potatoes in the patties, the carrots (if you’re really hardcore), and the pumpernickel (but you can just skip that. And the tarts).

The tarts were tasty, by the way. The dough from the Medaillons was better the next day. They benefited from mellowing in a cookie tin.

Cleve made a very good point that this would be an excellent brunch dish, with the egg and all. The patty was much like a mild sausage. He envisions it on top of a hash brown or with some home fries. I, personally, would serve it with buttery grits and a fruit cup. But to each his own. You could probably do some sort of Eggs Benedict interpretation with an English muffin and some Bechamel or Hollandaise.

Regardless, this meal was a success. Cleve said that it was even good reheated for his lunch. Perhaps he will elaborate in a comment.