Michela Chiappa is on Gower to meet and eat with a little-known community of Welsh-Norwegians.

OUR FOOD, OUR FAMILY WITH MICHELA CHIAPPA

Friday, 27 December

BBC One Wales, 7.30pm

Celebrity chef Michela Chiappa is back with a brand new series – Michela Chiappa’s Welsh Family Cookbook – that sees her explore the social history of Wales through an array of delicious dishes.

Meeting families from diverse backgrounds from around Wales, Michela – previously seen in A Welsh-Italian Christmas with Michela Chiappa – uses their family recipes to help them reconnect with their roots.

In the final episode of Our Food, Our Family with Michela Chiappa, the Welsh-Italian cook is on Gower to meet and eat with a little-known community of Welsh-Norwegians.

At the heart of the community are the Blytt-Jordens – three generations of Welsh-Norwegians. They are among several families long-settled in the area who have only recently discovered each other but now regularly gather to chat in their first language and eat cake. Michela joins the Blytt-Jordens in the kitchen to whip up  traditional Norwegian delicacies from a national pudding made with apples called tilsorte bondepiker to hot waffles and a pretty sponge cake with a Norwegian twist.  

On tasting one of the more unusual dishes, a fermented fish dish, Michela says: “I wasn’t expecting that. You can really taste the salt and seasoning… Absolutely delicious. To think it’s 2 years old – I wouldn’t usually go there I have to say – but it’s very, very tasty!”

Michela’s guide is grandmother Sol Blytt-Jorden who was born in Bergen but came to the UK when she was 20. Sol’s son Scott was born and bred in the UK, and now he has children of his own, he’s keen to adopt some of his mother’s Norwegian traditions to pass down the next generation. The problem for Scott, a woods craftsman by trade, is that he’s better with a bandsaw than a whisk.

Can Michela and Sol turn him into a star turn in the kitchen by teaching him some delicious Scandinavian dishes?