Raggmunk (Swedish Potato Pancakes) — The Recipe That Brought My Sister Back to the Table

Karin came. She flew from Stockholm to Minneapolis and drove to Duluth in a rental car and showed up at my door on Wednesday afternoon with a suitcase, a bottle of Swedish aquavit, and the red eyes of a woman who has been crying on and off for three flights and one rental car. I opened the door and she said, "Linda," and I said, "Karin," and we hugged in the hallway for a long time — longer than Johanssons normally hug, longer than we've hugged in years, because the hug needed to contain all the things we couldn't say on Sunday phone calls across six time zones. Karin is sixty. She looks like Mamma — small, sharp, the same blue eyes, the same jawline. She married Magnus in 1994 and moved to Stockholm and became more Swedish than the Swedes, as immigrants sometimes do when they return to the source. She speaks Swedish fluently now, with an accent that Swedes find charming and that Duluth Swedes find pretentious. She bakes Swedish bread that is, I will admit under duress, better than mine. She stayed for a week. She slept in Elsa's old room. She cooked — she took over the kitchen for three days and made things I haven't had since our childhood: isterband (spiced pork sausage), raggmunk (potato pancakes), and a pytt i panna that was so much like Mamma's I had to sit down. She visited Mamma every day. She and Mamma sat in the kitchen on Fifth Street and spoke Swedish — real Swedish, not the broken Swenglish that I manage — and Mamma came alive in a way she doesn't with me. The mother-daughter bond in the mother tongue. It's different. I saw it and I was jealous and I was happy for Mamma and both feelings were valid. Karin spent an evening with Paul. They sat in the living room and talked for two hours — about Sweden, about history (Paul loves European history almost as much as lake history), about books. Karin brought Paul a Swedish novel about a lighthouse keeper on the Baltic Sea. Paul held it in his right hand and his eyes were bright and grateful and he said, "Tell me about the lighthouses in Stockholm," and Karin talked about Söderarm and Grönskär and the archipelago lighthouses and Paul listened with the full-body attention he gives to anything involving water and light. On her last night, Karin and I sat at the kitchen table after Paul went to bed. She poured the aquavit — two small glasses — and said, "How are you really, Linda?" Nobody asks me this. Everyone asks about Paul. Karin asked about me. I said, "I'm cooking. I'm nursing. I'm managing." She said, "That's what you're doing. How are you?" I said, "Scared." She said, "Of course you are." And we drank the aquavit and it burned going down and the burn was good because it was a different kind of pain, a chosen kind, and sometimes a chosen pain is exactly what you need. She left on Tuesday. The house was quieter without her. I missed her immediately, the way you miss a limb — not slowly but all at once, completely, the phantom presence of someone who should be there.

Of the three dishes Karin made that week, it’s the raggmunk I keep coming back to. Not the pytt i panna that leveled me, not the isterband — the raggmunk. Maybe because it’s the one I can make alone on a Tuesday night without it feeling like a production. You grate the potatoes, you mix the batter, you stand at the stove and listen to the sizzle, and for a few minutes the kitchen smells exactly the way Karin left it. She wrote the recipe down for me before she flew back to Stockholm, on the back of a grocery receipt, the way Mamma always did.

Raggmunk (Swedish Potato Pancakes)

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 4 (about 12 pancakes)

Ingredients

• 4 medium russet potatoes (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 3 tablespoons butter, for frying
• Lingonberry jam, for serving
• 8 slices crispy fried pork belly or bacon, for serving

Instructions

1. Make the batter base. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, milk, eggs, salt, and white pepper until smooth. Let the batter rest for 10 minutes while you prepare the potatoes.
2. Grate the potatoes. Using the coarse side of a box grater, grate the peeled potatoes. Squeeze out any excess liquid with a clean kitchen towel, then stir the grated potato into the batter. Work quickly so the potato doesn’t brown.
3. Heat the skillet. Melt about 1 teaspoon of butter in a large cast-iron or nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. The butter should foam and just begin to brown.
4. Fry the pancakes. Drop about 1/4 cup of batter per pancake into the skillet, pressing gently with a spatula to flatten. Fry for 2 to 3 minutes per side until deep golden and crispy at the edges. Work in batches of 3 to 4 pancakes, adding more butter between batches.
5. Keep warm. Transfer cooked raggmunk to a wire rack set over a baking sheet in a 200°F oven while you finish the remaining batter.
6. Serve immediately. Plate the raggmunk with a generous spoonful of lingonberry jam and crispy fried pork on the side. They lose their crunch fast, so serve them hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 380 | Protein: 12g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 48g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 420mg