IN this series, we will be hearing from contributors all over the world about dishes that are important to them. This article is from Nathalie Dietrich from Switzerland who shares her love for fondue.
Our Swiss traditional cooking is more in a wintery style, as you can guess, because the country is in the north part of the Earth. As with most countries, we don’t eat only Swiss cuisine but also Italian, French and German. Traditionally, when people think about Switzerland, cheese or chocolate comes to mind. We have some speciality with one of them: cheese. It is present in our every day for most Swiss people. We have various type of cheese like Appenzeller, Gruyère, Vacherin, and so on.
A dish I especially like is fondue. Not chocolate fondue, like a friend said me once, but cheese fondue. There are two real type: the half-half as it is named or the Vacherin fondue which is less popular. The half-half is made with Gruyère and Vacherin. Some variety exists, like with mushrooms or tomatoes. All of them are tasty but my favourite is the Vacherin fondue. It comes from the canton of Fribourg, where I am from originally. To prepare it, melt together some water, Vacherin cheese, a garlic clove in a fondue pot and when the texture is nice, let’s go to the table and eat the fondue with some pieces of bread. Mmm, delicious!
Imagine a great day of winter on the slopes having a lot of fun and then you get home and have a cheese fondue with friends or your family for dinner. Is it not a perfect day? We eat this dish generally in winter when it is cold and the weather outside is cloudy but it is possible to eat this dish at every moment of the year. It is quite heavy and it is not so pleasant to eat this type of meal when the temperature is high and the weather sunny. Every Swiss family sometimes cooks this dish and you can also eat it in many restaurants so it is something very popular. Many different versions of fondue exist; I have seen in a Christmas market, in a hot dog. I mean instead of the sausage and ketchup, they put fondue in the bread. The second way is to have a cheese fondue in certain restaurants inside a pot made of bread. All these different versions are funny to see because it is different but it isn’t the same thing. The best cheese fondue is the traditional one. So come to Switzerland and try a real cheese fondue in an incredible landscape.
Here’s a recipe for Vacherin fondue that is similar to what Nathalie recommends.
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Recipe
Choose a mixture of well-aged vacherin AOP cheese. Use of quality Vacherin cheese is the key to a successful Vacherin Cheese Fondue.
- 1 kg of Vacherin Fribourgeois AOP cheese
- garlic
- 200 - 300ml of water
- pepper
Heat the water in an iron pot. Add Vacherin cheese and melt slowly. Be sure to stir constantly. Add lukewarm water if necessary. The cheese should become oily, creamy, and even a bit sticky and agreeably warm. The Vacherin Fondue is served in a chafing dish [a dish heated from below]. It is important to keep the temperature low; the cheese should not boil.
Fondue is served with bread or with boiled unpeeled potatoes.
