Sauced

I am making pasta sauce which requires 4 hours to cook. I am trying to think of anything we eat here in Minnesota that requires that long to cook. This recipe is from Anne Burell who writes (and frequently says), "Brown food tastes good." Well, I'm sure it does, but we are a mild mannered people who eat white food. You know -- potatoes, fish, lefse, soda crackers . . . marshmallows, I guess. Our pasta sauce comes from a jar. Our Mexican food comes from Taco Bell.

Yet, some of us eat lutefisk. Friends and loved ones, do you know what I am talking about when I say lutefisk. It's dried cod or other white fish reconstituted in a lye solution. No, really. It's a Scandinavian heritage thing. It's white and it's boiled in white milk and prepared with a white sauce and white mashed potatoes and the whole thing is covered in butter and eaten with white potato sausage and lefse which is (altogether, now) white.

I haven't had any since my grandmother passed away over 20 years ago. Even though I am a first born, I just don't feel that sense of personal responsibility to keep that particular tradition going. I know people who like to eat it annually, but I have never met anyone who said, "Boy, I sure do love lutefisk. Eat it weekly."

My memory of it is that it doesn't actually taste that bad, but you have to get past the truly horrific smell and the gelatin like texture which -- as we know -- is a deal breaker for me right there.