[Idyllchat] Swiss Food

Sat May 19 13:03:37 EDT 2007

Marguerite and Gerry:  I've copied Vance's text here--hopefully you will get the message.

"First let me say that nothing (roesti, raclette, fondue,  
kaeseschinitte, alpenmagaronen, etc.) tastes as good at home as it  
does in CH. I don't really know why, but I know it.

Roesti is pronounced "Rush dee" not "roast tee". It is hash browned  
potatoes any way you cut it, but it looks beautiful when golden brown  
and crisp. Again, being on holiday and in a beautiful place makes it  
better. Farmer roesti is roesti topped with cooked bacon, a slice of  
cheese, and a fried egg. Your cholesterol will be fine if you go out  
and cut grass all morning with a scythe after this.

Raclette means "to rake" in French. It is one of the best things to  
come out of France in the last millennium. Out in the open at a  
festival, you get it scraped onto bread. At home, you sit around a  
table with friends and have your own little pan to cook it yourself  
in a table top oven. You eat it with potatoes and small pickles and/ 
or pickled pearl onions. You scrape the cheese onto or by the  
potatoes and enjoy it. You can sprinkle the melt with paprika or  
pepper. My wife likes cubed ham on the top, some put a tomato slice  
on the cheese in the pan, others do their own thing. One can get a  
suitable facsimile by using USA domestic Swiss or Muenster in a  
microwave. Raclette cheese in the USA is priced like platinum. The  
dish is highly addictive.

Fondue is easy to "make" by opening one of the really good packages  
of prepared fondue sold in the stores. It needs a good close packed  
bread to enjoy. if you lose your bread in the pot, you have to either  
kiss the cook or buy the wine (depending on what seems PC). Barbara  
makes her own, but in a blind tasting, I don't know.

You see Kaeseschnitte in restaurants as "cheese toast" in English. If  
ever there was a loss in translation, this is it. Think of a thick  
slice of that good bread buttered, covered with a slice of ham and  
maybe a tomato slice, with grated cheese from the farm, and some  
paprika. Shove this into a hot oven in a bake-proof dish until the  
bread is toasted, pull it out for a second to pour in a jigger of  
white wine, cover it immediately with a lid, back into the oven to  
steam, and then onto a board to eat. A fried egg is good on this too.  
The small (used to be small) outdoor restaurant at Alpiglen below the  
north face of the Eiger has a menu of about two dozen Kaeseschnitten  
varieties. If one does The Eiger Trail from Kleine Scheidegg to this  
spot, it takes the guilt out of this.

Alpenmagaronen is simple to make and needs a cold night to really  
enjoy it. It is good for breakfast too. I like mine with some sweet- 
hot sauce on it. Peel and cube a couple of potatoes, boil them for 10  
minutes, pour a package of small straight tubular noodles (elbow mac  
will do if not in CH), cook for 8-10 minutes, drain and put a big  
portion of grated raclette, or a similar cheese into it, maybe add a  
splash of heavy cream to sauce it up a bit, and stir it all up. Add a  
large portion of caramelized onion, and stir it all in the mixture.  
Put on plates and serve with apple sauce on the side.

Caramelized onions are another story but worth the trouble. If you  
don't know how to turn on the stove, there are canned fried onions  
which are a poor substitute. Slice a lot of onions while chewing gum.  
By a lot, I mean A LOT. Fill a deep skillet with them and add a big  
piece of butter with more likely needed. Then you stand there and  
cook them over a medium flame as the butter melts. Stir at least  
every 5 minutes. In less than an hour you have golden brown limp  
onion rings that will keep in the fridge for a day or so. DO NOT  
drain the butter off. Caramelized onions remind me of sex. The action  
can be slow, but a certain point, things can get a bit frantic. Once  
the onions start to turn, up the stirring and pay attention and don't  
burn them.

The best alpenmagaronen in the Heartland can be found at The End of  
the World restaurant near Engelberg and at the Bahnhofli Restaurant  
in Lungern (Here the chef pours his cheese into the pot of boiling  
water and potato-noodle mixture when done. The water/cheese ratio  
here is crucial, and a secret, but it makes a great dish).

OK, enough. I am hungry now and should know better than to write  
about food on an empty stomach."

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: gerrytalbot at att.net 
  To: Idyll Chat 
  Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2007 9:54 AM
  Subject: [Idyllchat] Swiss Food

       The e-mail by Vance and all the others brought back memories of our first Swiss Untour, where we stayed in Lungern and had many meals at the wonderful Banhof Restaurant.
      On our return to NYC we found a great Swiss restaurant in Midtown Manhattan where the waitresses dressed in costume and the roesti was superb.  If you finished all your roesti the waitress brought you a second helping without your asking.  Unfortunately like too many things in NYC, the restaurant is long gone.  We buy packaged roesti at a German store in Yorkville, but it doesn't really compare.
       We tried to print out Vance's e-mail, but only the heading  will print for us, not the text!  Does Untours do something to the e-mails to prevent copying?  In any event our thanks to Vance for all his great e-mails!

                                                    Marguerite & Gerry 

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