flipMatpakke with Brunost and Rye Bread
Matpakke with Brunost and Rye Bread
Why this dish? During film shoots, Liv Ullmann eats little, out of concentration. The matpakke — the Norwegian packed lunch wrapped in paper — is exactly what you bring to a set or on a trip: simple, nourishing, quickly eaten between takes at the studio.
Two or three rye bread slices with brunost, that brown whey cheese with a salted caramel flavor, sliced thinly with an ostehøvel. Stack them, wrap them in parchment paper: the meal that travels.
On a film set, time is not your own: between takes you wait, the light is never ready. So I bring my matpakke, like all Norwegian children: dark bread, a sliver of brunost cut with the plane, all wrapped tight in paper. You eat it standing, quickly, without taking your eyes off the scene. This brown cheese, sweet and salty at once, tastes of home; it keeps me company when the role consumes me.
- •Rye bread — a few slices (base)
- •Brunost (brown whey cheese) — thin slices (signature topping)
- •Butter — a thin layer (binder)
Matpakke with Brunost and Rye Bread
Two or three rye bread slices with brunost, that brown whey cheese with a salted caramel flavor, sliced thinly with an ostehøvel. Stack them, wrap them in parchment paper: the meal that travels.
Why this dish? During film shoots, Liv Ullmann eats little, out of concentration. The matpakke — the Norwegian packed lunch wrapped in paper — is exactly what you bring to a set or on a trip: simple, nourishing, quickly eaten between takes at the studio.
On a film set, time is not your own: between takes you wait, the light is never ready. So I bring my matpakke, like all Norwegian children: dark bread, a sliver of brunost cut with the plane, all wrapped tight in paper. You eat it standing, quickly, without taking your eyes off the scene. This brown cheese, sweet and salty at once, tastes of home; it keeps me company when the role consumes me.
Ingredients (period version)
- Rye bread — a few slices (base)
- Brunost (brown whey cheese) — thin slices (signature topping)
- Butter — a thin layer (binder)
Ingredients
- Rye or whole-grain bread — 4 slices (base)
- Brunost / Gudbrandsdalsost — 100 g (signature topping)
- Butter — 20 g (binder)
- Parchment paper — for wrapping (transport)
Method
- Thinly butter each slice of bread.
- Using a cheese plane (ostehøvel), cut thin slices of brunost.
- Cover the bread with an even layer of brunost slices.
- Pair the sandwiches two by two, filling sides inward.
- Wrap tightly in parchment paper: the matpakke is ready to travel.
How it was made : Brunost, born in the 19th century in the Gudbrandsdalen valley, is made by slowly reducing whey until the milk sugars caramelize. The matpakke, wrapped in wax paper (and later special mellomleggspapir), was a 20th-century Norwegian school and work institution.
The contemporary twist : Reimagine the matpakke as a "Nordic bento": add a few slices of tart apple that contrast wonderfully with the caramel of the brunost.
Liv Ullmann · Charactorium
