Today, 21st January, is soldagen (the sun day) when the sun officially returns to Tromsø (for about 2mins over the mountains).  It can be seen from the centre of town, on the top of the island and on the south shore.  If the sun can’t be seen due to clouds then the celebrations are held [...]

Pinnekjøtt is one of the must-have traditional Norwegian Christmas dishes. It is made from ribs of lamb or mutton that has been salted and dried, and so it has a very strong flavour. Pinnekjøtt directly translates into “stick meat” in English, but the name doesn’t come from the shape of the meat (e.g. the ribs [...]

Farmor doesn’t use recipes so it is mighty hard to get any kind of standard from her.  For her pepperkaker recipe she gave me a little sheet of paper with primitive-Norwegian writing (Farmor is actually Finnish) with a real simple method: It reads: syrup, butter sugar and milk bring to boil with spices the dough [...]

Our Fårikål with cinnamon is credited to Tante.  We had just finished our Fårikål with curry and wondered what new tasty version we could come up with.  Tante said ‘cinnamon always goes well with lamb’ and a dish was born!  In this Fårikål we added the typical ‘bolle’ ingredients – cinnamon and cardamom.  We also [...]