Gooseberries on a freezer tray: leave for 2 hours, then top and tail easily

Here’s a shortcut a wine grape grower’s wife shared with me, for topping and tailing gooseberries. We use them in jam and pies, both of which I love, but it’s always seemed unfair to me that you first get pricked by the thorns and then you have the tedious job of topping and tailing them.

The trick is to place them on a freezer tray for 2 hours immediately after picking them. The bits on the ends break off easily when frozen, and you’ll save about 20 minutes of work per pie. Better yet, you need slightly less sugar in the jam because freezing the berries concentrates their own sugar, in much the way cryoextraction is used to make sweet ice wines.

A word of caution: don’t refreeze! Use them right after topping and tailing.

Swiss food news

Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain, Migros, will increase by one-third its purchases of Swiss Integrated Production grains for bread at the 2011 harvest, significantly increasing its use of near-organic grains. Integrated Production (IP, or PI in French) is a label that covers a set of very high standards followed by about 20,000 of Switzerland’s 60,000 farmers for part or all of their production. It is not as strict in terms of chemical use as organic farming, but farmers commit themselves to working closely with nature and to encouraging biodiversity by helping flora and fauna thrive.

Migros will increase its IP grains by 90,000 tons, using these for bread and bakery products made by its bakery arm, Jowa, and for flour sold in its food outlets. The decision should give a boost to the label TerreSuisse, jointly created by IP-Suisse, Migros and the Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sembach.

Swiss hare in field with bare patch (photo ©2010 Swiss Ornithological Institute / Marcus Jenny)

TerreSuisse farmers, notes Migros, use no fungicides or insecticides, and they make a concerted effort to create spaces that encourage biodiversity: ponds for wild plants and wildlife, empty stretches in the middle of fields to encourage the threatened skylark to nest there, as well as hares, and fallow fields that encourage insects and cornflowers to flourish. They often heap stones into mounds that serve as shelters for lizards.

By Ellen Wallace

Roadside stand with apricots next to trees with tomorrow's crop, Saillon, canton Valais, Switzerland

Saillon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - There are dozens of good reasons to go to canton Valais right now, starting with temperatures that fall one degree for every 200 metres or so of altitude in the Alps.

But the best reason for the next week to 10 days is apricots, fully ripe now, with wonderful flavour and selling for about CHF6/kg at roadside stands that have suddenly appeared everywhere.

Buy as many as you can eat in two days, close your eyes and enjoy one of Switzerland’s finest treats.

They are picked ripe and don’t keep at this stage: they’re meant to be eaten, right now.

One more day in the sun and they'll be perfect: apricots in Saillon, Switzerland

Three great ways to cool down with fresh mint

By Gillian Rogers

Fresh spearmint leaves (photo, Sage Mandela Rogers)

Known in Greek mythology as the herb of hospitality, nothing cools and refreshes quite like fresh mint.  Mojitos, lemonade, and granitas anyone?

Fresh mint granita

2 cups of water
1 cup chopped mint leaves (spearmint works well)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
fresh mint leaves for garnish

Fresh mint granita for a hot summer day (photo, Sage Mandela Rogers)

Combine the water, mint and sugar in a sauce pan, bringing the mixture to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer for a few minutes, then stir in the lemon juice. Pour the mixture through a strainer into a shallow glass dish. Freeze for approximately three hours, periodically running a fork through the mixture to break up any chunks of ice that form. The end result is a sweet, cool, slushy, delicious summer treat that both adults and kids will love. Spoon the mixture into small glasses or bowls and garnish with fresh mint leaves.

Fresh squeezed lemonade with mint

Sure, there are mixes out there, but what really tastes like summer more than a tall glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade with mint? Simple and delicious—only four ingredients:

3 cups of water
1 cup of fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
fresh mint (I’m partial to spearmint)

Combine the ingredients in a glass pitcher and stir, add ice if desired, and fresh mint leaves.  Make it the night before and keep it overnight in the fridge, so the mint infuses with the lemonade…mmmmmm.

Mojitos

Authentic Cuban version!

2 teaspoons sugar
Juice from one lime
About six mint leaves
1 sprig of mint for garnish
2 ounces of white rum
2 ounces of club soda
ice

Crush the sugar, lime and mint leaves in a glass.  Add the rum, club soda and ice.  Stir and add a sprig of mint.

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By Ellen Wallace

Gently stewed onions with herbs from a Swiss Alpine garden

Independence Day celebrations for Americans are upon us but I’ve now lived outside the US almost as long as I lived there, so the party is not quite as festive or important as it once was.

The day has taken on another significance for me: it’s the time when our Alpine garden onions are finally ready to eat, and they are exquisite! I rank them right up there with garden-fresh salads and potatoes as some of the World’s Best Simple Foods.

We had our first ones last night, one red, one white, and we prepared them very simply:

Recipe for lightly stewed garden onions with herbs

Slice them paper thin.

Warm 2 T olive oil in a deep frypan, add the onions. Add a pinch of Camargue fleur de sel (best sea salt, to my mind), several sprigs of fresh lemon thyme and two small sprigs of fresh rosemary.

Cover the pan and leave on low to medium low heat for 20 minutes, stirring gently once or twice. The moisture in the onions creates the steam.

We had these served on the side with barbecued steaks, mashed potatoes, fresh garden salad and a beautiful bottle of red wine from St Pierre de Clage in canton Valais, Baton Rouge 2004 (Vidomne winery) which is a surprising blend of two grape varieties better known in Italy, Barbera and Sangiovese.

The case of the Lausanne cake

By Ellen Wallace

Emmentaler cheese, known outside the country as Swiss cheese (photo: Swiss cheese marketing board)

Swiss cheese, Swiss rolls and today I discover gateau Lausanne: foods that don’t seem to be part of the panoply of what we eat in Switzerland, but the world knows them as Swiss foods. This happens elsewhere, of course, with the classic example of Belgium’s fried stick potatoes known as french fries. And Swiss cheese is a spinoff of Emmentaler, the famously holey stuff from canton Bern.

But Switzerland seems to have more than its fair share of foods blessed with Swiss names, and it’s unclear why.

To add to the confusion, if you live in Switzerland the language and cultural divide between regions is very marked, so that a torte in German-speaking Zurich is a foreign object in French-speaking Geneva, and German-speaking Basel’s leckerli is alien food to the Italian-speaking population in Ticino.

Benedikt, a German PhD student in the US who writes a blog that records his efforts to work his way through Bo Friberg’s tome, The Professional Pastry Chef, posted a beautiful series of photos and details of a “Gâteau Lausanne”. I was intrigued, read it through to the end and was charmed by the final product. Benedikt can definitely bake! It looks vaguely familiar to me, but I’ll have to make a visit to a bakery in Lausanne to see what they would call this, if they even bake it.

Maybe it is a bit like giving a name to your child that recalls a place you remember and admire or love, or a virtue, or something else positive with which to bless your offspring. My favourite in that line is the first name of Nigeria’s President Jonathan: Goodluck Jonathan.

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Scientists at the University of Lausanne have discovered that the third generation, or “grandchildren” of funghi they took from a field near Zurich could play a role in reducing the need for fertilizer for rice, allowing it to grow five times faster than rice produced today, with a little help from funghi which, in their turn, have been helped by labs. The researchers caution that the results of their work are far from being ready to apply to rice paddies, but the research unearthed significant information about rice (explanation, Science Now):

More than 80% of plant species make friends with a common fungus. In return for sugar, the fungus helps the plants extract nutrients from the soil. But rice plants, a primary food source for billions of people, don’t have this special relationship—and thus they don’t receive the extra boost the fungi give other plants. A new study suggests that with a little help from researchers, however, the fungus will bond with rice, increasing the plant’s growth rate by up to five times.

The first two generations of funghi had little impact on the rice, but the grandchildren did, which researcher Ian Sanders and his team surmise is due to the greater genetic variability of the third generation grown under laboratory conditions.

The research was published in the 10 June issue of Current Biology.

Rasmus Kofoed, Europe's best chef: Bocuse d'Or winner 2010

[update: video added] Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Here is hope for the unemployed: keep the faith that you are good at what you do and you will be rewarded. Denmark’s arguably best chef, Rasmus Kofoed, won the Bocuse d’Or title of Europe’s best chef, last week in Geneva. His Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant, Geranium, was closed recently for financial reasons, and the chef is currently without a restaurant, but he is expected to re-open it in August near the Parken sports stadium in the city.

The prize comes with a €12,000 award. Second and third place winners Gunnar Hvarnes of the Restaurant Hos Ingrid in Stavanger, Norway and Jérôme Jaegle, Restaurant Têtedoie in Lyon, France, were awarded €9,000 and €6,000 respectively.

Kofoed, age 35, has previously won bronze and silver at the competition. He now joins chefs from around the world for the 2011 Bocuse international final in January in Lyon, sometimes referred to as the World Cuisine Contest (Concours mondial de la cuisine).

His entries in the Geneva event:

• “flétan demi-sel au beurre noisette, morilles et fleurs de ciboule”
• “rôti de veau au jambon de Skagen, gressillons soufflés, airelles et pain noir, servi avec des ris de veau croustillants, asperges blanches, ail des ours et raifort”.

Bocuse d'Or competition, Europe's winning chefs, Geneva June 2010

The competition, presided over by Swiss three-star chef Philippe Rochat and French chef Joël Robuchon, invites 20 young chefs from 20 countries. The event takes place during the French-Swiss Gourmet salon in Geneva. The chefs have five hours 35 minutes to prepare two dishes in front of the public, working in 18m2 boxes. The first is meat-based, this year Swiss veal with two side dishes. The second is a fish-based dish, for 2010 one Sterling halibut weighing 5-6 kilos, with its head, served with two side dishes.

Kofoed came in second in 2007 in a competition tainted by controversy over pots used by winning chef Fabrice Desvignes. The pots arrived after the competition began.

Links to other sites: Copenhagen Post, l’Hebdo (Fre)

Interview with Kofoed about his new Geranium2 restaurant, scheduled to open this summer.

La Savoie, with chef Philippe Chevrier

Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The CGN boat company’s summer schedule goes into effect Sunday 13 June, which means the tourist cruise boats will be operating fully. Among the special offers are fine dining cruises, with wonderful meals from the Geneva port prepared by the kitchen staff working under one of the region’s best chefs, Geneva’s Philippe Chevrier (four-course meal CHF98, three courses for CHF85) and from Lausanne by the Beau-Rivage Palace.

You can dine at noon or in the evening.

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My son just graduated from college, from UBC in Vancouver. What better way to celebrate his homecoming than with yet another pie, our standard way for the past four years of welcoming him home to Switzerland from abroad. The rhubarb in the garden turned out to be exactly right, and when I asked if that would be acceptable for a pie I had an enthusiastic yes!

Pie in our house means the slightly salty American variety, a crust made from scratch, rolled out by hand.

Notes on ingredients: I keep my shortning in the refrigerator. Migros brand shortning is softer and easier to use, but Astra 10, which I buy at the Coop, is 10% butter, which I prefer. I take it out to warm up slightly, 15-20 minutes before I need it. My brown sugar is the soft variety from the US or UK, which you can find in several specialty food shops. Cooking butter or beurre cuisine is clarified butter, easy to find in supermarkets.

Rhubarb straight from the garden

• cut it just before you use it, to avoid woodiness developing
• make sure the stalks you cut are all about the same thickness and choose the reddest ones
• cut them off at the base of the plant and lop off that giant leaf at the top, leaving it on the ground if your clump is in a hidden corner of the garden, as the leaves are rich in nutrients
• try to select stalks from different parts of the rhubarb clump so it gets more light and air
• if you see any stalks about to flower or that are flowering, cut them off – the plant will give you rhubarb all summer if you keep it from putting its energy into flowers.

Preparing rhubarb in the kitchen

Wash the rhubarb but don’t scrape off the strings if you’ve just picked it.

Cut into pieces about 1/2 inch or 1cm long.

Sprinkle with:

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