Jonell Galloway
Make your own Valentine’s chocolate, Ticino style
Here is a great double-chocolate walnut biscotti recipe by Patricia Turo, born into an Italian family in the US, but now living in the Klosters ski resort in Switzerland. This recipe is therefore more in the spirit of Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
Be careful about the quality of chocolate you use: Avoid buying the American chocolate chips in a bag. You’d be better off buying a bar of dark chocolate from your favorite local (Swiss) chocolate maker and crumbling it up into bits. The same goes for the cocoa powder. Make sure it is good quality, preferably from a good chocolate maker.
To convert the measurements, refer to How to convert measurements for American recipes.
Jonell Galloway
This week’s foodie overview
I spend a lot of time reading, researching and tweeting about food and restaurants these days, so I thought I’d jot down my tweets from the last few days. These are from both The Rambling Epicure and Swiss Foodies and should give you an overview of what’s going on in the foodie world this week.
These tweets are often focused on Switzerland, but also include a lot of links to Swiss, French, German, British, American, Canadian and other research on food.
This week was the countdown to Valentine’s Day, so I listed oodles of Valentine’s dinners, weekend packages at hotels and chocolate shops. You can find the Valentine’s venues I tweeted last week in the 20 Valentine venues, posted earlier this week.
Sometimes I couldn’t resist writing about the snow and skiing conditions, because that determines how a lot of us in Switzerland plan our weekends, and therefore what restaurants we go to or what recipes we cook up. And of course occasionally, watches and Alinghi . . .
Remember, these are just tweets
Remember these are just tweets, so they are short and sweet. They are not particularly orderly; I just tweeted the information as I found it.
I suggest you skim over the headings, and if you’re interested, just click on any of the links that interest you in order to read the detailed article.
Who knows, this might even tempt you to start tweeting yourself!
This week’s tweet list
Valentine’s
20 Valentine venues: restaurants, chocolate and hotel packages for the “big day”!
Valentine’s events in La Gruyère.
Valentine’s package at Bernard Ravet, CHF500, hotel, champagne, 9-course dinner, breakfast for two, Relais & Châteaux.
Restaurants in French-speaking Switzerland w/ Valentine’s specials; just click on your canton! NOT TESTED BY THE RAMBLING EPICURE.
GenevaLunch: Lake Geneva Valentine’s cruise.
Ramada Geneva offering Valentine’s Day brunch as well as candelit dinner.
Hôtel des Armures in Geneva: special Valentine’s package, rooms, champagne, breakfast and chocolate.
Valentine’s package at Hotel Royal Geneva. Le Duo, chic delish restaurant & brasserie, chef trained by Bernard Loiseau.
Jamie Oliver’s Valentine’s Day menu, along with recipes and tips for a romantic feast.
GenevaLunch: Valentine’s for the “older” crowd.
Jonell Galloway
Tiny history of the parsnip
In the Middle Ages, Geneva was running over with parsnips, which they referred to as “white carrots”. It was almost always included in their “eternal pots” of soup, which consisted of seasonal vegetables that they just kept adding more vegetables to as needed, and a piece of meat once a week.
After World War II, many root vegetables went out of fashion in Europe, because people had had to survive on them and nothing else during the war, so farmers eventually stopped growing them. The same went for pumpkin. People in the north of France who had lived through the war and eaten pumpkin every day couldn’t bear the thought of eating pumpkin ever again.
In recent years, these old-fashioned vegetables, including parsnips, have once again become available, and chefs are going crazy with new ideas on how to use them.
Parsnips are plentiful at the moment and there’s nothing better than soup to warm you up on a cold winter’s day. Eric Burkel, former financial analyst, entrepreneur and now president of his local food coop in Paris, got this recipe from one of the farmers who supplies vegetables to the coop.
Parsnip soup recipe
Ingredients
500 g / 1 lb parsnips, peeled 80 g / 30 oz aged Mimolette cheese 60 cl / 2.5 cups chicken broth, heated15 cl / 1/3 pint extra-thick cream 4 shallots 1 branch of celery 30 g butter / 1 oz. butter
Instructions
Finely chop shallots. Melt butter in a saucepan. Slowly cook shallots until clear.
Cut parsnips into cubes. Thinly slice celery. Mix, then add to saucepan.
Pour chicken broth over vegetables. Salt and pepper to taste. Let cook on low heat for about 25 minutes.
While soup is cooking, use a vegetable peeler to cut the Mimolette into extra-fine slices. Set aside.
When soup is cooked, turn down heat and add cream. It is ready to serve as soon as the cream has melted into the soup and is warm.
Pour soup in bowls. Sprinkle with slices of Mimolette.
Note: This can be made ahead of time. If you do so, mix quickly with a hand-held electric mixer, then reheat in microwave. Suggestion: For a different take on the recipe, you could also add chopped apples after pouring the soup into the bowl. Croutons and herbs are also complimentary.Soup photo courtesy of Five Prime.
Jonell Galloway
Vegetarian blog
Mostly Eating is one of the most well-balanced vegetarian sites I’ve seen. It is overflowing with creative, tasty combinations of flavors, and contains recipes for every course. The chestnut, parsnip and orange soup recipe is perfect for this time of year, as is the cauliflower and white bean purée. The blog does include some non-vegetarian dishes, but there is a definite emphasis on meatless.
Molecular cuisine and much more
The British Larder food blog has a sleek, cutting edge design to match its daring, cutting edge recipes. There is an emphasis on desserts, with recipes such as tamarind pears with creamed tapioca and toffee pear lollipops and lots of espuma recipes. The photos are drop dead beautiful and the general cooking tips and safety awareness information is quite useful. Very professional site.
Essentially healthy food
Essentially Healthy Food is running over with beautiful photos of colorful, tasty and often surprising combinations, with recipes such as beef stew with globe artichokes, olives & pumpkin dumplings or swiss chard salad with raisins and pine nuts, perfect for this time of year.
For chocolate dessert lovers: moelleux au chocolat!
For those of you who can never pass up the moelleux au chocolat, or molten chocolate cake, when you see it on a menu (I’m one!), check out Gastronomers Guide.
The recipe is American, so it needs a little adaptation for a Swiss or European kitchen, but that is simple enough. Replace the bittersweet chocolate by a good quality dark chocolate from your favorite chocolate shop, and use a vanilla bean in place of the vanilla extract. The cayenne gives the cake an non-traditional Aztec flavor, which I love, but some may prefer to leave out. 450° F is 232° C, and be careful because precise temperature is very important. The altitude may also affect how long it takes to cook, so watch after it carefully. Four-ounce custard cups are the equivalent of about 12 dl.
Jonell Galloway
You too can be a king or queen, at least if you get the bean or plastic trinket hidden in every king’s cake, referred to as galette des rois in French.
Photo courtesy of From Buenos Aires to Paris.
The king’s cake is eaten during the period of Epiphany, or the twelfth day of Christmas, on 6 January. It was on the twelfth night that the wise men visited baby Jesus. Since in French and Spanish (and probably other languages I don’t know), the wise men are referred to as “kings”, the day is referred to as “king’s day”.
The tradition of eating a marzipan cake with a “bean”, as they call it in French, inside it dates back to the fourteenth century, according to Anglophone Direct. During the French Revolution, when kings were terribly out of fashion, they continued the tradition, but called it an “equality cake”.
The cake is divided equally among all the parties gathered, and the person who gets the “bean”, which is really just a charm, is crowned king or queen. Cakes are sold with a cardboard, gold-colored crown. If you’re not of the monarchist persuasion, you can denounce the throne and crown someone else.
These days, most people buy their cakes from a reputable baker, but if you want to give it a go, I would suggest trying Citron & Vanille‘s recipe. Her recipes are always original and reliable.
Jonell Galloway
Jean-Pierre Reichenbach with the Vaud sausages that he hopes will have AOC status - perfect with the soup
Reichenbach butcher shop in Aigle offers a good selection of regional products
by Ellen Wallace
You come to the Alps in winter with expectations of glorious blue skies and pristine white slopes, accompanied by the warming tones of cheese fondue, raclette and gluh wine or laced coffee taken in the brisk outdoor air.
And then it rains. It is not supposed to do that between Christmas and New Year’s, but in 2009 it did. Tuesday night and Wednesday brought downpours and fog. thursday wasn’t much better. Many people went shopping. Some of us stayed home and felt sorry for ourselves – until we were inspired to try something new and different in the kitchen.
There were no children in the house, so I could serve up odd vegetables. This time of year I get tired of the limited fresh vegetables in the markets, cabbage and cauliflower, which remind me of over-boiled vegetables of my childhood. I am not a big fan of cauliflower, but I’d read a recipe on the NPR (National Public Radio) web site that intrigued me, for cauliflower and leek soup with roasted walnut garnish. I’d bought the cauliflower, but forgot to buy leeks. I happened to have some excellent sausage and brown bread in the house. So here is the original NPR recipe by Carla Hall, which I’ll have to try sometime, and my rainy day Swiss Alpine lunch variation, which cheered up two adults, a sign of success with any food. It has the added advantage of being kinder to those who want to keep down their cream and butter intake.
The snow returned, after we ate this.
Recipe
Swiss Alps winter rainy day cauliflower soup
4 servings1 small head cauliflower
1 onion, preferably white
2-5 garlic cloves, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 litre turkey stock (part of the treat of a Christmas bird)
75-100 gr = 1/2 packet of Chevroux goat cheese spread: fromage frais, to taste
150 cl / 1.6 qts. milk
1 egg yolk
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Fresh nutmeg to taste
Garnish
8 toasted walnut halves
Chopped fresh parsley
1-2 tablespoons browned butter
- Wash and core the cauliflower. Reserve 8 tiny florets. Roughly chop the remaining cauliflower, onion and garlic.
- Roast the walnut halves in the oven, low heat (130-150° C / 266-302° F), 15 minutes, until lightly browned; take care not to burn them.
- In a large pot, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook until soft, but not taking on any color, about 3 minutes.
- Sprinkle the flour over the onions and garlic and stir to combine. Gradually whisk in the stock. Bring slowly to a simmer, stirring as the mixture thickens. Add the chopped cauliflower and return to a slow simmer. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon to keep the bottom from sticking or burning until the cauliflower is fork-tender, 10-12 minutes.
- Remove the pot from the heat and puree the soup in a blender until smooth. The original “creamed” recipe calls for straining the soup at this point, but as the daughter of a US Great Depression mother, I find it hard to throw away the vegetable bits. Our mixture was not strained and as a result had a slight grittiness, which we enjoyed.
- In a small bowl, lightly whisk the egg yolk with the milk. Whisk a bit of the hot soup into the egg/milk mixture. Then whisk the mix into the soup.
- Place the pot over very low heat and stir continually, gently, to warm through. Add the goat cheese and continue to stir, always over low heat so you don’t scramble the egg yolk, until the cheese melts, 3-5 minutes; do not let it reach the simmering point.
- Blanch the cauliflower florets set aside at the start, while the cheese is melting.
- Adjust the soup seasoning with salt and pepper. Grate in fresh nutmeg to taste.
- In a small skillet or pot, melt the 1 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Keep the butter on heat until it turns a nutty brown. Remove from heat and set aside.
- Mix the tiny cauliflower florets and the toasted walnuts in a small bowl. Portion the soup into shallow bowls and top with the garnish. Drizzle with the brown butter, then chopped parsley.
We served this with Vaud sausage (saucisse de Vaud) and an excellent brown bread from Migros. The sausage is made by Reichenbach butchers in Aigle, canton Vaud, whose owner is president of the Vaudois butchers association. The group has applied for AOC status for the product. It is a naturally smoked sausage that is cooked whole.
A Vaud sausage should be simmered in nearly boiling water not more than 75° C / 167° F for an hour. The bread is an organic, sustainable-development product that has good flavour and keeps its moisture well, a nice complement to the soup and sausage.
Jonell Galloway
When in Geneva, eat like the Genevans
In A Geneva Christmas: Longeole sausage, I think I got your mouth watering talking about longeole, or fennel seed sausage. But did you see the potatoes in the photo? That’s THE essential side dish: potatoes cooked in broth and white wine.
Langeole sausage served with potatoes cooked in white wine and broth.
I adapted this recipe from A la mode de chez nous, Plaisirs de la table romande, a book on cooking in French-speaking Switzerland, by M. Vidoudez and J. Grangier.
Read more…
Jonell Galloway
Christmas traditions in Switzerland
One should never think that everybody in Switzerland eats the same thing for Christmas dinner. With four languages and a multitude of “mini-cultures” tucked away its various mountain niches, and with a huge international population, Switzerland may well have more Christmas menus than any other country in the world.
In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, Geneva’s traditions are quite apart from the Vaud, for example, due to the late date Geneva finally decided to become part of Switzerland. Geneva traditions are often more influenced by their Savoyard and French neighbors, since they share about 100 km of border with them and only 5 km with canton Vaud.
What’s so special about a longeole?
Many Genevois eat a sausage specific to Geneva called longeole. Every region and many villages have their own sausage recipes, but the longeole is quite apart from the others for several reasons.
Longeole sausage and potatoes cooked in white wine, a Geneva Christmas specialty.
Jonell Galloway
Betty Bossi’s The Swiss Cookbook
The cookbook of the famous but fictional Betty Bossi, the equivalent of Betty Crocker in the U.S., came out in English in August. It makes a great Christmas gift, and is handy to have in the house, whether you’re a gourmet cook or just an occasional one.
The recipes are organized by region. In a land with four languages and such cultural diversity, this is a necessity. There is a brief description of each region and its cuisine, along with attractive photos. Each recipe is accompanied by a photo.
The ring binding and glossy pages make it practical to use. The Swiss Cookbook is appropriate for Swiss people as well as for expatriates, because it gives a good overview of traditional Swiss cuisine and contemporary cuisine using Swiss ingredients.
It is an attractive gift for most anyone interested in food.
It can be ordered online from My Switzerland or at the Betty Bossi online shop, and is also available in many supermarkets.
Jonell Galloway
The Netherlands shut down for Christmas at the end of November. I was curious about how and why their traditions differ so much from the ones with which I’m familiar, so I did a little research.
How Dutch Christmas is different from other Christmas celebrations
Sinterklass
According to Lorri Brown, in the Netherlands, Christmas celebrations start the last Saturday of November, “when Saint Nicholas arrives via steam ship from Spain.”
Brown goes on to say that since Holland was a country of sailors, they have mixed ideology, folklore, religion and legend into quite an original and mixed bag very specific to the Dutch. This includes making Saint Nicholas the patron saint of sailors!
The Sinterklass or Santa Claus tradition, when Santa hands out the gifts, is still stronger than the tradition of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, according to The Holland Ring. It falls on 6 December.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
Christmas Eve and Day are family-oriented. There are no gifts, and it is less commercial than in other countries, although commercialism does seem to be seeping in.