Vestments By Visti

Passport & Plate - Nielsen Biksemad

USA | Wednesday, March 12, 2014 | 5 photos

Ingredients
•1/2 stick of butter
•1-2 large yellow or red onions, diced
•2 potatoes (must be already cooked, cold, and chopped)
•Leftover meat scraps (chicken, sausage, corned beef, salami…anything except seafood. Diced meat scraps work best.)
•Leftover vegetables (mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, zucchini, squash, peas, etc)
•Worcestershire sauce
•Salt & pepper
•Green onions or chives, chopped
•1-2 eggs

The amount of ingredients listed above are just estimates; there aren’t any required measurements. The amounts depend on how many leftovers you have to use in the refrigerator or how many servings you want to make.

 

How to prepare this recipe
•Chop and dice all leftovers you are planning to use from the refrigerator (meat, potatoes, veggies, onions)
•Fry a couple pads of butter in a heated pan
•Sauté onions until golden
•Add the meat, mix until warm
•Add the potatoes, mix until warm
•Toss all of the vegetables on top, mix until warm
•Add Worcestershire sauce to taste
•Put lid on pan and cook until heated all the way through (everything is already pre-cooked, so it just needs to warm throughout)
•Fry eggs in separate pan while hash is warming
•Place cooked eggs on top of hash when ready
•Top with salt, pepper and chives
•Enjoy!

 

The story behind this recipe
This recipe is my family’s rendition of a traditional Scandinavian hash referred to as biksemad in Danish, meaning “mixed together food”. My great-grandparents used this recipe (my great-grandmother from Sweden called it pytt i panna, “little pieces in the pan”) and then my grandparents in Denmark after them. My farmor (dad’s mother) used it regularly to feed five hungry boys at the end of a long week. As my dad told me, back then they didn’t throw leftovers away; if it wasn’t used for lunch the next day as open-faced sandwiches, it was all tossed in the pan on Friday night.

The story of how it passed along to my three siblings and myself is one my dad loves to tell. He came home on a Saturday night after a long day of work and my mom told him they needed to go to the grocery store, because there was no food to make dinner. When he opened the refrigerator and saw a collection of containers with leftovers he said, “let’s make biksemad”. “The kids will never eat that,” my mom said, to which he replied, “if they’re hungry enough they will.” Finances were tight for my parents raising four kids and any way to improvise healthy meals that fed a growing family was needed. As the story goes, we ended up finishing off the entire pan, asking for more. Even my grandmother from Chicago (my mom’s mother), added her own twist to this recipe, truly making it a family gem, when she suggested adding Worcestershire sauce for a unique, extra flavor. It has been a favorite family meal ever since.

This recipe has become even more meaningful to me as I’ve grown up and witnessed so much waste in our culture, especially when it comes to food. Much like re-purposing old furniture and items, this recipe is cost-effective, eliminates waste, and creates something new from something old, giving it a different “flavor”. It invites us to think outside the box and be creative…to be mindful of what we have, toss it all in the pan and experience something new.