These lompe rolls with cream cheese and smoked salmon—you can read more about lompe below—are a modern Norwegian classic. Lompe can be hard to find outside Norway, but you can also make them with flour tortillas or another soft flatbread. Similar salmon rolls are made with tortillas in Norway too.
What Is Lompe?
For this recipe, the first thing to explain is what lompe is: the flatbread we wrap around the smoked salmon filling.
Lompe is a traditional Norwegian potato flatbread that’s thin, soft, and easy to roll up. It’s made from a dough of cooked, mashed potatoes, a little flour, and salt, then cooked without added fat. Traditionally, it’s cooked on a large, flat griddle called a takke.
Perhaps its best-known use is pølse i lompe, with a hot dog wrapped inside, but Norwegians also eat it with many other savory and sweet fillings. It works particularly well with smoked salmon: its subtle, mild potato flavor doesn’t overpower the salmon, and its soft, flexible texture makes it ideal for rolls that are sliced and served cold.
You can find packaged lompe in almost every Norwegian grocery store, but of course you can also make it at home.
One of the interesting things about traditional lompe is precisely how simple its ingredients are. The basic dough needs nothing beyond potatoes, flour, and a little salt. It can be made entirely with wheat flour, but versions containing both wheat and rye flour also exist. There’s no yeast, baking powder, or other leavening agent, and the simplest recipes don’t add any extra liquid or fat, either: the cooked potatoes provide all the moisture the dough needs.
For these salmon rolls, I used store-bought lompe that I bought in Norway. Assembly takes just a few minutes this way, though I’d also like to try making my own lompe later on.
Modern Norwegian Bites
This recipe presents traditional Norwegian ingredients in a modern form. It isn’t an ancient dish that has been made unchanged for centuries, but a popular Norwegian cold appetizer today. You might serve it to guests, as part of a cold platter, for lunch, or as a simple everyday meal.
Although the original version includes a few ingredients that are almost impossible to find outside Norway, it’s easy to recreate the flavors anywhere in the world. And that’s what matters: the bold, salty, smoky flavor of the salmon is nicely balanced by the mild cream cheese, while the lompe provides a subtle base with a mild potato flavor. Dill is a classic match for salmon, while arugula’s fresh, slightly peppery flavor gives the rolls a more modern, international feel.
What You Can Substitute
The Norwegian version I used as a starting point calls for two ingredients that are very hard to find outside Norway: lompe and Snøfrisk cream cheese. But don’t let that put you off. Both are easy to substitute, and doing so won’t fundamentally change the recipe. And even if it does, that’s fine too: Norwegians eat these versions as well.
You can simply replace the lompe with tortillas—preferably flour tortillas—or another flatbread. Many modern Norwegian recipes use tortillas to begin with.
The Norwegian version I based this on uses Snøfrisk Naturell cream cheese. This Norwegian cream cheese is made from goat’s milk and cow’s cream and was introduced for the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. It tastes a little fresher and tangier than regular plain cream cheese, with a mild goat cheese flavor. It’s hard to find outside Norway, so you can substitute any plain cream cheese. I used Philadelphia—not sponsored.
If you’d like something closer to the flavor of Snøfrisk, you can replace some of the cream cheese with a mild, spreadable goat cheese, such as Chavroux.
Norwegian Smoked Salmon Lompe Rolls
Ingredients
- 3 lompe or flour tortillas
- 200 g smoked salmon thinly sliced; 7 oz
- 60 g cream cheese ¼ cup (4 tablespoons, or about 2 oz); traditionally Snøfrisk Naturell
- 25 g arugula 1¼ cups loosely packed
- ¼ red onion
- fresh dill a few sprigs
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
- First, finely chop the red onion and fresh dill.
- Spread a thin layer of cream cheese over one lompe or tortilla, almost all the way to the edge.Make the rolls one at a time, repeating all the steps for each lompe.
- Arrange the thinly sliced smoked salmon over it, covering the entire surface.
- Sprinkle with the finely chopped red onion, fresh dill, and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
- Pile the arugula on top.
- Roll up fairly tightly. Place the rolls seam side down.
- Refrigerate for 10–15 minutes to let them firm up a little and make them easier to slice.
- Cut the rolls in half.
- Serve!
