cheese

A Proper Swiss Cheese Fondue

maki — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:14:20 +0100

Martha passed away on the 26th of December last year. When she was still healthy, we shared many a pot of cheese fondue with her during the cold winter months. Her fondue was without question, the best I’ve ever had anywhere. So in her memory, we made a proper cheese fondue.

I’ve already posted Martha’s fondue recipe 5 years ago (she was still making them then), but since it was one of the very early posts here on Just Hungry, it has no relevant picture to accompany the recipe or anything. To rectify that, here again is Martha’s proper Swiss fondue, with many photos and detailed instructions.

In Switzerland, Fondue is Cheese Fondue

Cheese fondue is a traditional Swiss dish that originated in the Alps, mainly in and around the canton of Valais (French) / Wallis (German). Contrary to popular view outside of Switzerland, it did not originate as an après-ski snack; it’s a hearty peasant dish, using ingredients that were available in the winter: cheese, wine, coarse peasant bread. And since it a traditional dish, it never went ‘out of fashion’ or ‘died out’, as you might think it did if you live in the UK or the US or any place that had the Great Fondue Craze of the ’70s, when a fondue set was a ubiquitous wedding present.

In Switzerland, ‘la fondue’ means a cheese fondue and nothing else. Other types of dip-bits-of-food-in-a-communal-pot dishes are specifically called fondue-something, e.g. fondue bourgignonne (bits of beef filet fried in a pot of oil), fondue chinoise (thin slices of beef or other things cooked in a pot of broth), and so on. (You might be surprised to know that chocolate fondue isn’t that popular in Switzerland. It may be served at touristy restaurants here, but is not a home cooking fixture by any means.)

Finally, fondue is always served as the main dish, not an appetizer or as part of a multicourse meal.

Equipment needed for a proper Swiss cheese fondue

So, what do you need for la fondue? First you need an appropriately shaped pot. The traditional shape is a fairly shallow, rounded ceramic pot with handle, like this one. The critical part is the rounded part, as we’ll see later. This is one of the two pots we have.

You also need something to keep the cheese warm. You actually cook the sauce on the stovetop, so you don’t need a tabletop burner, though you can use one on a low flame. The ideal is a spirit burner, like this one. The pot is suspended over it on the iron frame.

Finally you need fondue forks. Fondue forks are long and thin, perfect for skewering the bread. (Antique chipped hand-me-down plate is optional.)

The cheeses and other things in the sauce

The cheese sauce is usually made up of 2 or more types of cheese. A good moderately aged Gruyère (aged at least 8 to 12 months) is usually one of them, since it has such great flavor.

Another popular cheese is Emmenthaler, the stereotypical ‘Swiss cheese’ with the big holes. Emmenthaler does make the sauce very stringy and somewhat gooey, which can make it a bit hard to handle.

Martha’s preference was to use Vacherin Fribourgeois, which has a full, distinctive flavor and does not make the sauce stringy.

Her secret ingredient was one block of the ‘spreadable cheese’ that comes wrapped in foil triangles in a round cardboard box (e.g. Laughing Cow). The otherwise icky cheese helps all the cheeses melt together and stay together coherently.

The other important components in a fondue sauce are white wine and kirsch. Here in Switzerland, a young Chasselas Romand, aka Fendant, with a slight sourness is used. If you can’t get hold of such a wine, a Sauvignon Blanc will do, perhaps with a squeeze of lemon juice. And kirsch just adds that extra kick.

The bread

In Switzerland, only bread is dipped into the cheese. Any kind of bread with a sturdy crust and a fairly robust crumb is good: a decent baguette, any kind of ‘artisan’ bread. Here we used a Weizenbrot, a hearty country bread. Notice all the pieces are cut so they each have a side with crust.

I guess you could dip other things, but you will still want to have a good quantity of bread. I know people like to dip things like raw or boiled vegetables, apple or pear slices and the like (in Japan they like to dip things like boiled quail eggs, wiener sausages and chikuwa (fish sausage-like things)…), but I think that if you need vegetable crudités or fruit, they are best served alongside the fondue, and to just dip bread in the sauce. (And if you get invited to a Swiss home for fondue, you’ll only get bread in most cases.) If you are gluten-intolerant, use a gluten-free bread.

So, let’s make fondue!

Recipe: Martha’s Cheese Fondue Sauce

This amount of sauce will serve 4 people as the main course. If you only intend to have fondue as part of a bigger meal, adjust the amounts accordingly.

1 garlic clove
50ml / about 1/4 cup kirsh
2 tsp. cornstarch
400 g / a bit less than 1 lb Gruyère cheese (aged at least 8 to 12 months), shredded
400g / a bit less than 1 l Emmenthaler or Vacherin Fribourgeois cheese, shredded (Please use real Emmenthaler. A generic ‘Swiss Cheese’ will not do. Note that in Switzerland you can buy bags of pre-shredded mixed cheese called “Moitié-moitié”, meaning ‘half and half’.)
1 piece of ‘spreadable’ cheese, e.g. Laughing Cow/La Vache Qui Rit (not the mini-Babybel type, the triangular foil-wrapped soft gooey double-creme type)
3 dl / 1 1/4 US cups of young slightly sour white wine such as Chasselas or Sauvignon Blanc

Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic clove. Discard the garlic. (This optional step adds a little extra flavor to the sauce.)

Dissolve the cornstarch in the kirsch. Set aside.

Put the fondue pot on a medium-heat. Add the wine and cheeses. Heat while stirring, until the cheeses melt. Add the kirsch and keep stirring until the sauce is smooth and bubbly. This takes about 20 minutes.

Now, set up your fondue pot stand and burner and transfer the pot to the stand. The burner flame (or tabletop cooker) should just be hot enough that the sauce stays how and just sort of seething on the surface. Any hotter and the cheese will burn on the bottom.

Take a piece of bread, and spear it firmly on the fork so that the crust is on the outside. You can optionally lightly dip it in kirsch at this stage.

Take your speared-bread fork and stir it around in the cheese sauce. Each person should scrape the sides and the bottom of the pot at least once with each go. This prevents the cheese sauce from sticking or burning on the sides. None of that namby-pamby dip-and-go!

Here the bread being used to scrape off the cheese bits that stick to the surface of the pot. Now you see why a rounded-sides pot is ideal; a pot with sharp angles is much harder to scrape around properly.

If you do insist on dipping other things into the sauce, you will just want to dip those lightly, but still use the bread for that stir-wipe action.

(A point of etiquette: Pull the bread off the fork with your teeth, trying not to touch the fork itself with your mouth. And absolutely no double-dipping!)

As the cheese sauce gets less and less, it will get thicker. It’s important to keep stirring-wiping. You may gradually want to lower the flame’s intensity if you can too.

When there’s just a little cheese left in the pot, turn off the heat. Keep scraping off the cheese. If you’ve done it right, you’ll just be left with a small circle of burnt on cheese, which you can carefully pry off. (Note how the pot is scraped almost clean.)

The burned bit is considered to be the final treat of a fondue. A generous cook may cut it up and share it, but a more selfish one (cough) will just pop the whole thing in her mouth.

So, there you have it. A proper Swiss cheese fondue, eaten the Swiss way.

What to drink with a fondue, and what’s for dessert

The same wine that you put into the fondue would be perfect. You could also have kirsch in shot glasses. Martha always served stron black tea, which served as a perfect palate cleanser to counteract the strong taste of the cheese sauce.

The winter fruit salad she also served as dessert (usually just whatever citrus fruits were available, like grapefruit, blood or regular orange, etc.) was a nice refreshing ending to the meal.

If you can’t use alcohol for some reason

Do remember that this sauce is properly cooked on the stovetop, not just heated through until the cheese melts, so most of the alcohol content will evaporate. Swiss kids eat fondue along with the adults and grow up to be fine upstanding citizens. If you can’t have alcohol for religious reasons and so on, this recipe is not for you I’m afraid. To satisfy your cheesy urge, try a bagna cauda - fontina cheese melted in milk. It won’t be the same though.

Swiss food shopping news: The Cheese Club has British cheese

maki — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:08:08 +0100

Here’s another bit of food related shopping news for my fellow Swiss residents, expat or not. I recently got an email about a new site called The Cheese Club. They are still in pre-launch mode - the official launch is scheduled for February. One thing that makes they quite interesting is that they are run by an English and Swiss couple and will be selling British cheeses, as well as Swiss and Spanish cheeses. As far as I know, British cheeses aren’t that widely available here in Switzerland (Jelmoli has a limited selection, at least in Zürich) so this could be good news for a lot of people. (There really is no substitute for a good Stilton, for example.)

Although they haven’t officially opened yet, they are already selling a cheese tasting pack, which includes wedges of blue Stilton and Wensleydale, for 69 CHF. They guarantee delivery by December 21st. Could be a great gift for your favorite homesick Brit!

The Cheese Club

Hmm, low-fat artisanal local cheese

maki — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:24:26 +0200

I finally succumbed to the inevitable and went to the dentist yesterday, to have a back molar that has been twinging with pain for months looked at. And, as to be expected when you hold off that dreaded dentist visit for too long, my options weren’t good: root canal surgery, or get the tooth pulled. I pondered my choices for, oh, about 5 seconds before settling on the tooth extraction option. (I’ve had root canal surgery once before…never, ever again will I go through that agony).

While it was my lesser-pain option, and Herr Dentist was as efficient as can be, I was still in pain as I got back to Zürich. (Herr Dentist is in Winterthur.) But my spirits lifted when I saw that the Wednesday Speciality Market (Spezialitätenmarkt im Hauptbahnhof) was back after a monthlong summer vacation. I headed straight for my favorite cheese vendor, which sells cheeses made by farmers/cheesemakers in the Züri Oberland region - in other words, very local, all artisanally made and so on.

This time, we spotted something I’ve never noticed before - reduced-fat cheese. Now, I have a built in prejudice against industrially produced cheese in general and that awful plastic cheese that is sold as ‘low-fat Swiss’ in the U.S. On the other hand, I’m always looking for tasty options that won’t keep adding padding to my body where it’s not needed. So we got a couple of small wedges of these slimmer cheeses. And surprise - they weren’t so bad. Not as unctuous as full-fat cheeses, but full of character and very nibble-able.

The only problem is that in my slightly dazed state I forgot to note down the cheese names. I shall do so next time I’m there for sure. Yay I found the names: they were Bäretswiler Puurechäs, a mild cheese sort of like a cross between Emmenthaler and Gouda, and Megerlimuck, a rather salty Appenzeller-like holey cheese. I also got an absolutely marvelous Sbrinz-type hard cheese with the rather un-delectable name Hinkelstein. Despite its name (which apparently means “menhir”), it tastes like the very finest Parmesano Reggiano, with a slight aroma of flowers. Delicious! In any case if you make it to Zürich, be sure to check out the Wednesday market in the Hauptbahnhof, especially the Zürich-area cheese guys. (I previously talked about another cheese they sell, the very pretty Edelweiss, last year.)

Tune in to the Big (Cheddar) Cheese

maki — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:39:02 +0200

Don’t forget to tune in to Cheddarvision.tv (previously mentioned on Just Hungry here) today!

They are going to turn the Big Cheese over, take a core sample, and see how it’s doing! If they haven’t already…I’m not sure. Was that label on the other end before? (thanks Mimi!)

Very easy Pao de Queijo, Brazilian cheese bread via Japan

maki — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:52:03 +0100

This may not be well known outside of the two respective countries, but there are pretty strong historical and cultural ties between Japan and Brazil. There was a wave of emigration from Japan to Brazil in the early part of the 20th century and later on around the ’50s and ’60s. And in the last 30 years, many Brazilians of Japanese descent (people of Japanese descent born in another country are called nikkei-jin) have in turn emigrated to Japan to fill labor shortages. Perhaps because of this, a few years ago one of the staples of the Brazilian diet, pao de queijo, little cheese breads, became very popular. While their popularity may have descended a bit from their peaks (Japan tends to be periodically swept up by big food or fashion trends, which after a time get dropped without warning when people move onto the next thing, but that’s another story), they are still made by bakers throughout Japan.

I think that pao de queijo appeals so much to the Japanese palate because they are small, round and cute, and have a distinctive gooey-sticky-glutinous kind of texture inside. This texture is called mochi mochi, after mochi, the very gooey-glutinous rice cakes.

Traditionally, pao de queijo are made with a sour casava flour (here’s a good recipe, but that’s not that easy to find here. Looking around on some Japanese food sites, many recipes called for a readymade mix (!) or using rice flour…which isn’t that easy to get here either. Then, I found a recipe (not online…) that uses a regular mashed potato. If a potato is mashed up while it’s still hot, it does indeed get rather gooey, as anyone who’s tried to mash them in a food processor can attest to. Sticky, gooey mashed potatoes may not be ideal for straight up eating but here it serves its purpose perfectly.

The one thing I was missing though was the slightly sour taste in a traditional pao de queijo. I added some sourness by using some well drained feta cheese. The rest of the cheese should be a pretty sharp one like Parmesano or Asiago, aged Cheddar or Gruyère.

So, there’s plenty of faking going on in this recipe, but they are dead easy to make with ingredients that are widely available. So, if you are Brazilian please don’t beat me up. :) They’re still very good, I promise. And so cute. No one can have just one. They also happen to be gluten free (if you use potato starch; cornstarch may have a small amount of gluten) and vegetarian (no eggs) too.

Very easy Pao de queijo

200g / 7 oz potato, cut into small chunks (about 2 medium-small potatoes, but it’s best to weigh them after peeling)
90g / about 3 1/4 oz cornstarch or potato starch
100g / about 3 1/2 oz grated cheese - half feta and half a sharp cheese like cheddar, parmesan or gruyere (you can also try all feta, which would make them more sour)
Salt for cooking the potatoes

Suggested equipment: food processor

Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Boil the potato chunks in salted water, until they are almost falling apart. Drain well, return to the pan and shake around until the potatoes have dried out.

Put the hot cooked potato chunks in the bowl of a food processor, and process until it’s pasty and gooey. Add the cornstarch or potato starch and the cheese, and pulse until all mixed. Take the dough out of the food processor and knead a little bit. It should be a non-sticky and very pliable dough - sort of like Play-Doh. If it seems too loose add a bit more corn/potato starch. (Note: the amount of cornstarch or potato starch required seems to differ for some people. I suspect this has to do with how well you drain and dry off the potatoes, and what kind of potatoes you are using. I use a firm boiling type of potato, such as Charlotte, Nicola or Bintje. In the U.S. Yukon Gold is a good kind to use here. Baking potatoes may be a bit too floury to achieve the slightly gummy texture you want from the mashed up potato.)

If you don’t have a food processor, mash up the hot potato chunks with a masher, then mix in the other ingredients while it’s still hot, being careful not to burn your fingers. Knead well. It’s almost as quick to mix by hand as by food processor.

Divide into 12 to 16 equal pieces, and form into balls. Bake for 25-30 minutes until lightly browned on the outside. (They won’t really puff up much since they have no leavening.) Best eaten while still warm.

You can vary this by adding sesame seeds, sprinkling grated cheese on the top (brush the tops with egg white or milk to make it stick), and so on.

Troubleshooting notes

A few people have had trouble with the consistency of the dough. I’ve added some notes about the type of potato to use, and the necessity of drying the potatoes off well. If the amount of cornstarch/potato starch indicated in the recipe is not enough, add a little more by spoonfuls until the dough ceases to be sticky.

Pao de queijo, the very easy way

maki — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:10:49 +0100

Heidi's hard goat cheese, perhaps

maki — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:24:49 +0100

One of my favorite books as a child was Heidi. Heidi, in case you don't know, is the story of a little Swiss girl who goes to live with her grandfather, the reclusive Alm Uncle. It is the most famous children's book ever written in Switzerland. The author Johanna Spyri was actually a resident of Zürich, who thought of the story of the simple Alpine girl while she was convalescing from an illness in the Grisons, which is the eastern part of the country.

Cheese figures quite prominently in the story of Heidi. Since the Alm Uncle keeps goats, it seems logical that he made cheese from the milk of those goats. But in actuality goat cheese is not at all common in Switzerland. The goat cheese that is the most familiar to most of us is the French style - creamy in texture and intense in flavor, but it's very unlikely that the Alm Uncle made that kind of cheese, since he was making cheese mostly for his (and Heidi's) consumption. It would have needed to be a long storing kind. In one passage in the book, he is toasting a hunk of cheese:

The kettle soon began to boil, and meanwhile the old man held a large piece of cheese on a long iron fork over the fire, turning it round and round till it was toasted a nice golden yellow color on each side. Heidi watched all that was going on with eager curiosity. [...]

Then he brought her a large slice of bread and a piece of the golden cheese, and told her to eat. After which he went and sat down on the corner of the table and began his own meal. Heidi lifted the bowl with both hands and drank without pause till it was empty, for the thirst of all her long hot journey had returned upon her. Then she drew a deep breath--in the eagerness of her thirst she had not stopped to breathe--and put down the bowl.

"Was the milk nice?" asked her grandfather.

"I never drank any so good before," answered Heidi.

"Then you must have some more," and the old man filled her bowl again to the brim and set it before the child, who was now hungrily beginning her bread having first spread it with the cheese, which after being toasted was soft as butter; the two together tasted deliciously, and the child looked the picture of content as she sat eating, and at intervals taking further draughts of milk.

The cheese he used has to be firm enough to put on a long fork and toast over an open fire. Was there such a thing as a firm, hard goat's cheese?

Then on Wednesday, when I made my weekly prowl through the main station market, there it was: a hard goat's cheese. Not from the Grisons, but from the Züri (Zürcher) Oberland, a mountainous rural region to the southeast of the city of Zürich.

With a distinctly blueish-grey, translucent color that is rather like pale moonlight, it's one of the most unusual looking cheeses I've ever encountered.

The taste, like its color, is mild, delicate and somewhat elusive. It is totally unlike any other goat cheese I've ever had. It reminded me the most of Manchego, a sheep's milk cheese from Spain. The texture is quite firm, and although it's a whole milk cheese it is crumbly rather than creamy. It's the kind of cheese I could nibble on for a long time without getting tired of it.

I'm not sure if the Alm Uncle's goat cheese was anything like this one, but it has opened my goat-cheese horizons. I only bought a very small piece, but next time I will buy a larger one and see if I can toast it over the fireplace.

Technorati Tags: cheese, switzerland

Masterchef challenge, day 17: Spinach, Cheese and Tofu Frittata

maki — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:16:34 +0100

We are into Week 5 of MasterChef. The ingredients for day 17 are:

Mature Cheddar cheese
Spinach
Chili peppers
Sweet corn
Potatoes
Smoked haddock

I think that this list was meant to test if the contestants could judge whether or not certain flavors belong together. There are two very assertive ingredients here: the mature (aged) Cheddar, and the smoked haddock. As I've stated here several times already, most of the time fish and cheese don't go well together, and when it comes to smoked or cured fish, that holds even more true. The only exception is the classic combo of smoked salmon or lox with cream cheese, but cream cheese is such a mild flavor that it's more of a creamy accompaniment to the salty-fattiness of smoked salmon. But in this case we have a very strongly flavored cheese, with an equally strongly flavored smoked fish, and the two just don't marry well.

Since I've never cooked with an aged Cheddar before, I wanted to center my dish around that instead of the haddock. After some ruminating I settled on a frittata. A frittata (an Italian omelette usually baked in the oven) is a perfect lunch or brunch dish; less creamy than a quiche, and more substantial than a regular French omelette.

The one ingredient that most likely the actual MasterChef contestants would not have had on hand is the tofu. I added tofu to boost the protein content without adding more eggs, but it could be made with a couple more eggs too. I also had in mind making a dish that is low in carbohydrates for my low-carb loving friends. This only has 2 tablespoons of canned sweet corn in it, which could be omitted to make it even lower in carbs. It's also a vegetarian dish for lacto-ovo-vegetarians. The blandness of the egg and tofu, the slight bite of the chili pepper, the sort of almost creamy-smooth texture of the spinach, the crunch of the corn, with the occasional intensely cheesy mouthful, all went together very well. And the yellow, white, green with flecks of red looked really pretty too.

This is one wedge of an 8-serving frittata, and made a perfect lunch with a green salad. Optionally add some salsa or marinara sauce on the side. This rather large amount is easier to get right than making it in a smaller pan. If you have leftovers, frittata is delicious at room temperature, so it's a different and great take-along lunch. I would not freeze it however, because tofu and egg turn into a sponge-like substances when frozen.

Unused ingredients: potatoes, smoked haddock.

Spinach, cheese and tofu frittata

8 eggs
1 firm tofu
200g / 8oz. fresh spinach (a couple of very large handfuls)
1 chili pepper
3 Tbs. canned or frozen sweet corn
3 garlic cloves
Olive oil
100g / about 3 oz. aged cheese - aged Cheddar, or Gruyere

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 360°F.

Finely chop the garlic. De-seed and de-vein the chili pepper and chop finely also.

Crumble the cheese into rather large pieces.

Wash the spinach if needed, and chop roughly unless you are using baby leaves.

Drain the tofu well, dry off the surface a bit with kitchen towels, and cut into about 1.5cm / 1/2 inch cubes.

Crack all the eggs into a bowl and beat with 2 Tbs. of water, 1 tsp. of salt and some freshly ground pepper.

In a non-stick pan with an oven-safe handle, sauté the garlic and chili pepper in about 1 Tbs. of olive oil. Take out about half of it and reserve. Add the tofu cubes and let them slightly brown on all sides. Take out the tofu cubes.

Add the spinach and corn to the pan with the reserved garlic/chili, and sauté rapidly until the spinach shrinks and becomes a limp but bright green pile. Season with a bit of salt and pepper, and take out.

Heat up an additional 1 Tbs. of olive oil in the pan and swirl about. Mix all the ingredients into the egg mixture, and add to the hot pan. Immediately put the pan into the heated oven, and set the timer to 20 minutes. At that point check the fritatta - it should be a light golden brown on top.

Serve immediately or at room temperature, cut into 8 wedges.

Aged Cheddar Cheese

maki — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:30:19 +0100

I love cheese, and living in Switzerland it's quite easy to indulge myself. When I travel I make a point of trying the local cheeses, but when I'm at home I usually concentrate on the hundreds of Swiss and French varieties available, since they tend to be reasonably priced. Sometimes I venture into the gourmet basements of Jelmoli or Globus (two of the big departments stores in Zürich) to ponder the offerings from other places. One of the ingredient lists in the ongoing MasterChef Ingredient Test which I am playing along with called for aged Cheddar cheese. Cheddar is so widely available in plastic-packaged factory versions that it's easy to forget that artisanal cheddar exists. This particular wedge came from the Cheddar region itself, according to the Globus cheese counter lady.

As you can see, really aged Cheddar has some blue veins in it and has a cracked, slightly dry surface. It has a rather crumbly texture, and an intense, really "aged" flavor. It may be too strong for some people, and is only a distant cousin to the regular soft, slightly plasticky Cheddar you see in U.S. or U.K. supermarkets. (For better or worse, in Switzerland we only see the handmade type of cheddar. We have plastic Gruyere and other common Swiss cheese types though.)

This aged Cheddar is probably best as an eating cheese, maybe with a Port or similar fortified and/or heavy wine, though it can be used sparingly in cooking. I'd use it the way I might use a strong blue cheese or Stilton.

Technorati Tags: cheddar, cheese

Edelweiss cheese

maki — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:08:24 +0100

Isn't this one of the prettiest cheese labels you have ever seen? I found this cheese being sold at one of the many cheese stands that set up at the Wednesday market here in Zürich

Most European cities of a decent size have local markets of course. The beauty of this one it's so very conveniently located right in the impressive main hall of the Hauptbahnhof (main station). That means that we can always cruise the stands in comfort, even on a freezing, grey February afternoon.

This particular stand specializes in cheeses that are produced by small farms in the Zürich area itself. Other chese vendors sell cheese from the Valais, Appenzell, Jura, and other regions. For a cheese lover, it's impossible not to pick up at least one, or two, or more. And there are plenty of opportunities to nibble on samples too. It's not just cheese of course: there are organic vegetables, all kinds of pastries, interesting looking breads, home-made jams and single flower honeys, and a lot more. The emphasis is on Swiss products, though there were some Italian, French and Spanish food stands too, as befits the location as one of the crossroads of Europe.

The petit Edelweiss cheese was a very mild Camembert or Tomme type (white edible rind), with a delicate milky taste and interesting holes in the structure, perfect for just eating out of hand with crusty bread.