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 stands until next day
roll [...]

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 [...]

I’m sorry I couldn’t wait.  This cake was so yummy I had to take a bite (or a couple) before I could take a photo.  We had Sunday dinner at Tante and Onkels place.  Dinner was inspired by the season’s best.  Fårikål was the main course with Autumn lamb and new potatoes made by none [...]

A Troika in Norway is a special chocolate bar – a layer of marzipan, a layer of chocolate truffle and a layer of raspberry jelly dipped in chocolate to hold it together.  It is very thin and compact similar in texture to a Cherry Ripe or a Wonka Bar.
As it’s my birthday we thought [...]

In Norway, there are still Lefse recipes around from the 1630s! This is supposedly the traditional and original Hardanger recipe used:

Norwegians like to have their cake and eat it too. The carrot cake may not be the Norwegianest of cakes, but Norwegians have embraced it as a way of pigging out and eating healthy at the same time. So much that the carrot cake has dethroned the good old chocolate cake as the standard of [...]