A Fondue How-to and Review

Since fondue is relatively easy to prepare and so expensive at restaurants (expect to pay around 30 CHF a person), we finally broke down and bought a fondue set at Manor.

Our beautiful set!  Includes six skewers, a burner, fondue pot holder and fondue pot (caquelon). (Flowers not included)

We thought we would share our fondue making experience with our readers!

Ingredients for Fondue:  (For two people)
Clove of garlic
400 grams of grated cheese (we chose Moitié-Moitié, description below)
150 mL of white wine (the cheapest one you can find, believe it or not the Swiss recommend it)
50 mL (a shot) of Kirsch
2 - 3 teaspoons of corn starch (in German, it's called Maisstärke)
Freshly ground pepper
Love

Ready to go.

Dipping Accoutrements:  Traditionally only bread is dipped.  However, we decided to mix it up.  All ingredients are cut into bite-size pieces
Bread
Potatoes
Apples
Pineapples

Fondue Preparation:
1)  Cut the clove of garlic in half and rub the inside of the caquelon with it.  (The Swiss Ms thinks this is unnecessary if you are adding garlic to the pot anyway, but I say it's part of the tradition and magic of cooking fondue)

2)  Add wine and cheese, warm on medium-low heat to about 60 Celsius (150 Fahrenheit) and stir.

3)  After the cheese has melted a little, mix together the kirsch and corn starch and add it to the cheese mixture.  Keep stirring.  

The cornstarch/kirsch/white wine/cheese.

With a little patience, gentle heating and much stirring comes success.

Note:  The first time I made fondue, I was worried that the cheese and liquids would never combine, but they do.  (For the engineers, it goes from a biphasic liquid/solid to a single, delicious homogenous liquid).  If the cheese and wine separate later, add more corn starch mixed with a cold liquid (wine, kirsch, water, milk).

4)  Place the caquelon on the table over your burner and enjoy!  Spear a tasty comestible of your choosing, dip it in the fondue pot, sprinkle with some pepper if you desire, and enjoy.  (Some Swiss even like to dip the bread in Kirsch before dipping it into the cheese).  Make sure you don't drop your bread in the cheese.  Swiss tradition says a woman has to kiss all the men at the table, while the man has to buy everyone a drink!  (Swiss Ms: This works well when it's just you and your husband.)

400 grams of cheese went down easy.  (Swiss Ms: Too easy.)

Note:  Make sure that someone is always stirring the fondue to keep it from burning.  Over the course of the meal, a delicious crispy layer of cheese will form at the bottom of the pot, right over the burner called religeuse, highly prized and fought over by the Swiss!  It tastes like a Cheez-it.


Fondue Cheese Review:

Moitié-Moitié

Commonly found at COOP and Migros.

Moitié-Moitié is half Gruyère and half Vacherin Fribourgeois cheese, and is absolutely delicious.  This mixture is the most popular type of fondue and once you taste it, you'll know why.  The combination of spicy Gruyère and softly melting Vacherin makes for the perfect, melty pot of cheese.  While we did not smell the cheese while we were eating, you could definitely tell when you left the room and came back.  In fact, when the Swiss Ms. went to the gym, she realized her workout clothes still smelled like dinner!


Appenzeller (Swiss Ms' First Fondue)

While Moitié-Moitié was our first attempt at cooking our own fondue, the Swiss Ms' first fondue experience was with Appenzeller.

Unlike the Moitié-Moitié recipe, which had to be combined with other ingredients, this one was already prepared.  Appenzeller is a slightly sharp cheese, that the advertising copy describes as "spicy".

The packet already had the correct amount of cornstarch/wine/kirsch/cheese.

Just heat slowly until it melts completely.

Unbelievably, it took us almost a full year to try fondue.  

Being shown how to eat fondue properly by our local Zurich host.

The crispy layer of burnt cheese at the bottom of the pot (religeuse).  Yum!

Valais Style (My First Fondue)

My research group took a day retreat to Riederalp in the canton of Valais, where we spent the day talking about science while snow-shoeing and eating fondue! 

I don't remember specifically what cheeses and ingredients are in this fondue.  It seems that there are as many recipes for fondue as there are people who make it.  Everyone has their own unique recipe or "special ingredient."   

The fondue looked like there were two different kinds of melted cheese in the pot.  While tasty, the Swiss in my group did not like this fondue at all, saying it was too garlicky and salty.

So far, my favorite is Moitié-Moitié and the Swiss Ms' favorite is Appenzeller.

As you can see, there's more than one way to do fondue.  We cannot wait to try the others!

-Herr Cervelat

The Farmer's Market in Oerlikon

Before I begin this post, I want to congratulate Crunluath, for successfully identifying the piece the accordion player was performing in our previous post [It was Vivaldi's Four Seasons (Winter)].  As a reward, Crunluath received a delicious bag of Basler Läckerli.  En guete!  (Enjoy!)

I would also like to apologize for the infrequency of our posts.  It has been over a month since I last posted.  The Swiss Ms. and I have been extremely busy, travelling all over the States (for work and for fun) and we have a huge backlog of posts to upload.  So, stay tuned, loyal readers.  Much to come!

One of things we are very grateful for is that almost everyone here speaks at least some English.  A simple "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" and we typically receive the shy response, "A little bit."  The conversation that follows is nearly flawless English.  I'd be pretty happy if I also spoke a "little bit" of German.  

Incidentally, we have also found that people are a little bit friendlier to us if we begin with "Grüezi" (a common Swiss-German formal greeting, which is short form of "Gott grüsse Euch", which is "God greets you").  We've found that attempting a little Deutsch (as bad as it is) goes a long way.  We are in Switzerland, after all, and we should respect that English is not one of the four officially recognized languages (the four are German, French, Italian and Rumantsch).

Despite the prevalence of English, we still get slightly anxious about approaching people here and it has taken us some time to build enough courage to interact with the Swiss.  We decided to face our fears on a trip to Oerlikon, a district in the northern part of Zurich, and home to one of the city's biggest farmers markets.  

Oerlikon is a very large station, with several major trains, buses and tram lines stopping there. 

Oerlikon Farmers' Market: The thing to do on a Saturday morning.

Who wouldn't want to be here?  Look at that delectable spread! 

Our apartment-mate had requested we buy him some apple cider at the farmers' market.  Therefore, we first set out to accomplish the task at hand.

The sign translated to, "Wehntaler's Sweet Cider, freshly pressed."  If you bring your own 1.5L bottle, it's 2 francs, and if you need to buy a bottle, it's only 2.50 francs.  What a deal!

Since we got one for Kevin and one for ourselves, we both got a chance to dispense our own fresh cider!

Emboldened by our apple cider purchase and the beautiful sunny weather, we decided to buy food for an impromptu picnic in the city. 

The Swiss Ms. bravely buying some fresh bread and knuss gipfel (a Swiss hazelnut croissant)

Adding some apples and getrocknete tomaten (dried tomatoes).  Didn't know these would be salted and dried.

What meal would be complete without cheese?  We bought the Splüga (a cheese from the Splüga region, which is in Southeast of Switzerland) and Formaggio Valle Verzasca (a cheese from Valle Verzasca, a valley in the Canton of Ticino, Switzerland).  The Splüga was a soft, mild cheese, while the Valle Verzasca was a hard, more pungent cheese.

With our bounty in hand, we took the tram easily down to Bellevue Platz, a large central square in the heart of Zurich.  We headed over by Lake Zurich to chow down on our spoils.

Look at that feast!

To top it off, we visited Café Bar Odeon for some coffee and drinks.

Nothing like a cup of milchkafee (milk coffee) after a picnic!

I decided to go for a mint julep!

The warm, sunny weather beckoned us to explore, so we strolled around the city, going up and down Niederdorf (known as Zurich Lower Village), Bahnhofstrasse (Zurich's main downtown street), and Lindendorf.

A stunning view of the city from Lindenhof, a park in the old town of Zurich on Lindendorf hill, overlooking the Limmat River.  The hill gets its name from the tilias (lime tree or Linden tree).

One of the many drinking fountains placed all over Zurich.

A view of the Grossmünster (a Romanesque-style Protestant church).  You can climb up the tower and get really great pictures (in a future post!).  Note the Swiss Alps in the background.

Thanks for reading!

-Herr Cervelat

Tasting the Cheese of Appenzellerland

Sorry for the delay in posts.  Typically, we're good about it, but the Swiss Ms has left for the United States, leaving me all alone in Zurich.  Instead of travelling, I've been spending most of my time in lab for the sake of science.  However, despite not travelling, we have quite a backlog of expeditions that I need to post for our faithful readers!

In early May, we realized that we had not taken advantage of the large amounts of cheese in the area.  Sure, we've bought some cheese at the grocery store, but we wanted to taste the cheese from its source!  We decided to go to Appenzellerland and visit the Appenzell Cheese Factory, located in a remote region in Northeast Switzerland.  Appenzellerland is actually divided into two half-cantons (Appenzell Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden), and is usually referred to as die beiden Appenzell (the two Appenzells).  The reason for this division was religious, with Ausserrhoden being Protestant and Innerrhoden remaining Catholic.

The coat of arms for Appenzellerland.  (Children should avert their eyes...)

Unlike the other regions we have visited, there were no direct forms of transportation to Appenzellerland.  In fact, a one-way trip took us nearly two hours!  

A one-way trip planned by the good people at the Thalwil train station.  They even gave us a print-out to help us out!  So courteous!

We first went south from Thalwil along Lake Zurich to Pfaffikon on the S2.  There, we transferred onto a totally new type of train:  the Voralpen Express!

There it is!!!  A new train!

It feels like I'm riding in a chalet with big windows and real wood paneling.  The train also made melodious sounds to inform passengers when it was about to arrive at a new stop.

The red line indicates the route of the Voralpen express.  It goes from Lucerne to Romanshorn (without going through Zurich HB), passing St. Gallen on the way!

Despite the Voralpen journey taking about an hour and a half, it was very scenic and pleasant, so the time seemed to fly by!

Beautiful rolling hills.

Cows cows cows.

We arrived at Herisau, a small town in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, where we needed to transfer to a bus line that is run by Die Post (The Swiss Postal Service) to the Appenzell Cheese Factory.  The Appenzellerland region is not serviced by the the SBB, so Die Post came in to run the public transportation for the area.  I think it has to do with the fact that the area has many hills and is very rural.

Thank goodness for Die Post!  Without it, we would have some trouble getting to  the factory!

We had to take a bus from Herisau to Stein AR, Post, another 16 minute journey to get to our destination.  After nearly two hours of travel, this cheese factory had better be open.

We're finally here.  S2 => Voralpen Express => Post Bus

The long journey has made her hungry!

It was open!  We walked inside, and immediately we were assaulted by the smell of cheese fermenting.  Very intense.  As we wandered around, a nice employee approached us.  The conversation went something like this.

Appenzeller Factory Employee:  What would you like to do here?
Me:  Eat.
(Silence.)
Swiss Ms:  Um...I think he wants to go to the restaurant.
Appenzeller Factory Employee:  Restaurant is right this way.

I think the Swiss Ms was less than impressed with my monosyllabic answer and attempted to make it more meaningful (Swiss Ms: More like polite).  I was hungry.  Fortunately, the restaurant was open.

The restaurant features cheese made right in the factory.

Cozy interior feels like I'm inside a mountain chalet.

 And then, the food!

A delightful plate of Appenzeller cheese!  Starting from the upper left, we have the:  (1) Classic, (2) Bio (Organic), (3) Surchoix (very good), (4) Extra (very very good), (5) some fig/fruit thing and (6) quarter Fett Rass (awful).

The Original Appenzeller Toast:  ham and pears on toasted bread, topped with melted Raclette  (another Swiss cheese) and Appenzeller cheese (I think it was the Surchoix).

Fully fed, we moved onto the factory tour and we saw the cheese being made!

Where the cheese making magic happens!

So.  Much.  Milk.

Preparing to make the cheese.

So.  Much.  Cheese.

We learned that the cheese is seasoned with a brine of secret alpine herbs that gives it a spicy flavor.  (The Swiss say spicy, but I think we might call it sharp.)  If I'm not mistaken, each one of the wheels of cheese is still individually rubbed with the seasoning.  The cows graze on the rolling green meadows to give them the highest quality milk.  Such care!  No wonder it tastes so good (except the Fett Rass...this is the aged reduced fat cheese).

We made our way to the neighboring museum to witness how cheese making was done before it was all industrialized!

The cheesmaker started with 65 liters of full cream raw milk (from happy cows!).  They added 5 - 6 liters of warm water with dry bacteria cultures.  It was heated to 32 degrees Celsius (90 Fahrenheit), then simmered for 1 hour.  Rennet (Curdled milk from the stomach of an unweaned calf) was added to curdle the milk.  The resulting mixture was cut up with a cheese harp to make small identical pieces of curd.  Finally, about 10 liters of whey (liquid remaining after milk had curdled) was replaced with warm water, "washing the curd" to dilute the lactose.

The man uses cheese cloth to pick up the curd (two hands and his mouth make a triangular net) to pick  it up!

Look at all that curd!

Close up of the curd!  No gloves.

The curd is lightly pressed to remove excess whey.

The curd is sectioned off to nine pieces and placed into a mold.  The cheese is pressed and turned over several times a day.  The following day, the cheese is put in a salt bath for conservation.  Then, it is stored in a cheese cellar and brushed with seasoning until ripened to perfection!

Before we left, we decided to take some of Appenzellerland with us!

Yum!  Our favorite cheese from our lunch cheese platter.

Thanks for reading!

-Herr Cervelat