Fårikål with Rosemary and Garlic
Autumn is Fårikål season in Norway. The sheep have just come off the mountains and are fat from all the good Summer grazing before they are made into chops perfect for Fårikål. The grass must be very tasty up there in the mountains because I find that Norwegian mutton has a stronger, kind of ‘gamey’, flavour than that of the grain fed sheep in Australia.
This year, (since I know how much Fårikål Norwegians eat – a lot), I thought I’d experiment with some new flavours to keep up my Fårikål enthusiasm over the next couple of months. That way Moose and Lilu get their favourite Autumn dish every week and I won’t get bored making the same meal 12 times in the season.
Fårikål has always reminded me of pot roast, so this week I thought I’d make a ‘lamb roast with rosemary and garlic’ style Fårikål. It turned out perfect. In fact, Moose said it was the best Fårikål he had ever had – *blush*. I kept to the traditional recipe but just added a few extra ingredients to jazz things up a bit. My new recipe is below – I hope you enjoy this new take on a traditional favourite. Why not try this new version to celebrate national Fårikål day on the last Thursday of September.
Fårikål with Rosemary and Garlic
Serves 2
500 grams of lamb chunks on the bone
1/4 medium cabbage
2 cloves of garlic
1 onion
2 medium carrots
2 medium new potatoes
whole peppercorns – to taste
dried rosemary
1 beef stock cube
2 dollops of butter
water
Method
Preparation: Chop the onions, carrots and cabbage into bite size pieces. Chop the potatoes into large pieces. (The potatoes will dissolve into bite-size pieces and enhance the broth.) Grate or mince the garlic.
In a large pot fry the onions and 1 dollop of butter. When the onions become see through add in the garlic and lamb chunks. Sear the lamb on the outside. Add in the peppercorns and rosemary and stir. Add in the carrots, cabbage and potatoes and stir. Fill the pot with enough water to cover 2/3 of the ingredients. Add in 1 dollop of butter and crumbled stock cube and stir. Bring to boil and then simmer for two hours with a lid on. Stir occasionally. Serve warm in a pasta bowl with crusty bread on the side.
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MMMmmmmm… wonderful cooking… seems like it’s delicious.
Recipe turned out pretty good. I did add some celery and used beef broth for a liquid. I will use more cabbage next time because after two hours, the cabbage was almost dissolved in the liquid. The lamb was certainly tender and practically falling off the bone, however.
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from L-Jay:
That’s great! And celery will certainly enhance the flavours in the broth – if you use fresh celery leaves it will add to the colour, making it look and taste ‘fresh’. You know, it’s funny – when I was writing the recipe I was trying to figure out if the cabbage I had was large, medium or small…lol. In Australian terms it was miniture but I hadn’t seen enough cabbages in Norway to know what size Norwegians would consider it. I called it ‘medium’ but recently I’ve seen other smaller ones that would now make me call mine ‘large-ish’. Hmmm. But you know what, anything goes! That’s what I love about traditional Norwegian recipes. For me, I think next time I would also add some swede or sweet potato – even pumpkin for a Halloween special!
The Norwegian fårikål-rule is to use same weight cabage as meat. 500 g meat = 500 g cabbage.