Recipes using seasonal ingredients found in Switzerland in February

Papet vaudois, a Swiss sausage and leek specialty from canton Vaud.

Worry no more mushroom barley soup with crusty garlic toast at Spirit of Pistoulet.

Easy duck confit recipe at The Rambling Epicure.

Fat-free Swiss carrot cake at Swiss Foodies.

Moroccan-style chicken pie at Epicurious.

Cabbage, collard greens, red onion, and blood orange coleslaw at The Rambling Epicure.

Double-chocolate walnut biscotti at The Rambling Epicure.

Curried squash or pumpkin soup at Swiss Foodies and Simply Recipes.

Fennel recipes and ideas for combinations.

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, in Switzerland and around the world.

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.

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 wine . . . and this week, the Vancouver Winter Olympics and those cute wooly pigs you see in the photo.

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!

The list is long, so I’ll list the main topics, which are marked by headings in bold: Restaurants, Recipes, Swiss news, International news, Food trends, Nutrition, health, healthy lifestyle, Chocolate, Wine, Miscellaneous food and related info, Skiing, snow, lifestyle, and Nice quotes.

This week’s tweet list

Restaurants

Taste the latest in the food world, the wooly pig, 23 & 24 Feb. at du Chalet-des-Enfants in Le Mont-sur-Lausanne.

Tired of roestis and pasta in Verbier? Good classic French at La Grange, no surprises.

The Rambling Epicure: check out our restaurant listings.

The Bernerhof hotel in Gstaad has a restaurant for everyone’s taste: pasta, Chinese, traditional.

Tired of roestis in Zermatt? Check out authentic Japanese cuisine and sushi at Myoko, Seiler Hotel.

The food at King’s restaurant Verbier is a delightful mix of English, French, and world influences.

The Walserhof in Klosters is a perfect place to celebrate special occasions, and the food is top notch.

Everything you need to know about eating in Zermatt.

Check out the divine rolled truffle pizza at Quirinale in Geneva.

The Cottage Café in Jardins de Brunswick in Geneva is a great place to meet for afternoon meeting.

Site that lists restaurants in Switzerland that do home delivery.

Read more…

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.

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.

Vanilla Vintage owner Dorothy Sidlo just likes old things: dresses, furniture, recipes. Her list is long.

And her list includes old-fashioned but easy fruit cake, which she has just posted on her site, based on a recipe by a Mrs. Fontaine. I thought I’d adapt the recipe for you.

Christmas cake is something you can make well ahead of time, so you can get one Christmas dish behind you already this weekend.

Mrs. Fontaine’s old-fashioned Christmas fruit cake recipe

0.6 kg / 1 ½ pounds sifted all-purpose flour
0.8 kg / 1 ¾ pounds white sugar
6 eggs
2.8 dl / ½ pint milk
2 teaspoons soda
2 grated nutmegs (noix de muscade)
450 g / 1 lb raisins
450 g / 1 lb currants (raisins de Corinthe)
½ pound lemon or orange peel
½ gill / 1/4 pint / 1.2 dl brandy
½ gill / 1/4 pint / 1.2 dl rum
1 teaspoon ground cloves (clous de girofles moulus)
Nuts of your choice

Preheat oven to 165° C / 325° F. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth.  Dissolve soda in a little hot water, then add to milk. Add milk to butter and sugar mixture.

Add spices to sifted flour. Mix well.  Beat egg yolks thoroughly. Beat egg whites, until stiff. Fold yolks into flour, then gently fold in beaten egg whites.

Wash and dry all fruit. Chop lemon or orange peel finely. Mix in a bowl, and lightly flour all fruit. Add to cake mixture.

Grease a large tube pan or several small pans. Pour mixture into pan or pans.

Bake in 165° C / 325° F oven for 1 1/2 hours, or until done.  Test with a clean straw or knife. It is done when it comes out clean.

This recipe originally comes from a certain Mrs. Fontaine, who added: “This recipe has been in my family for 60 years.  It was in my mother’s collection . . .   You can substitute berry juice for the rum or gin, if you are religious.  The cake improves with age.”

Suggestions: why not try half white sugar and half brown to give it a little more character? Don’t go too heavy on the nuts; add just enough to give it a bit of crunch.

The age-old Geneva and Savoyard specialty called rzulé in the local dialect, better known today as rissole aux poires, was nearly extinct not so very long ago. The dish consists basically of pears braised until they caramelize, which are then used to fill a pastry. The result resembles a fried apple turnover or chausson, even though it is baked.

Very Easy Kitchen's beautiful photo of pear rissoles.

The nearly extinct Marlioz pear saved by Geneva woman

You don’t just use any old pear to make rissoles. You use a variety specific to the region: the Marlioz pear, which was saved by none other than Eliane Pottu, says La Tribune de Genéve. Jérôme Estèbe wrote a delightful feature, in French, on the fortunate revival of this dish. Traditionally, every family in canton Geneva and the Savoy had a couple of Marlioz pear trees in the garden, but this tradition has slowly dwindled away.

Read more…

Even though stuffed turkey, cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes are pretty standard fare, most families have their own version of the feast, including grandma’s recipes as well as traditional ones.

Photo courtesy of Steve Lupton/Corbis.

I’ve gathered some ideas that allow you to plan your own personalized Thanksgiving, right here in the Lake Geneva region, without having to have someone send you the ingredients from back home.

Thanksgiving planner

Epicurious has devised quite a clever Thanksgiving menu planner that should help everyone have a successful, stress-free Thanksgiving. You fill in a form, answering questions about what why type of dinner you want, and they propose a customized menu.

A gourmet Thanksgiving

I filled it in, with no holes barred, and this was what they suggested:

Read more…

When it comes to traditional American recipes, Fanny Farmer is still about as reliable a source as you can find.

Since corn was the main grain in North America before the Europeans arrived, I think every Thanksgiving meal should include some kind of corn dish, just for symbolic purposes. We can be almost certain that the Pilgrims ate some version of this dish at their feast with the Indians.

The American Market in Geneva and Nyon sells Quaker Yellow Corn Meal. Otherwise, a coarse, but precooked, yellow polenta can do the trick. Like pumpkin pie, it can be a bit tricky, depending on the altitude and the ingredients, and especially when you use polenta, so you might want to do a trial run before the big day.

If you can’t find black molasses (in Europe, what they call mélasse is often a mixture of molasses and other kinds of syrups), the American Market also sells Grandma’s pure black molasses.

Fanny Farmer’s Indian pudding recipe

1/4 cup coarse-grain yellow corn meal
1 cup cold milk
3 cups scalded milk
1/2 cup dark molasses
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon or 1 tsp ginger (whichever you prefer)
4 T butter

Mix corn meal with 1/4 cup cold milk until smooth. Add slowly to scalded milk and cook in double boiler for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

Stir in molasses, salt, sugar, cinnamon, ginger and butter. Pour into buttered 9-inch/23 cm baking dish. Pour remaining cold milk over the top. Bake 3 hours at 300° F/150° C. Serves 4 to 6.

Tom and Maggie’s sweet potato pie in lieu of pumpkin

We’ve been making Thanksgiving dinner together for oh so many years — ever since we were in college in Paris. Since the pumpkin in France was always too watery, no matter what method of cooking we used and what type of pumpkin, we decided to use sweet potatoes, which give a much more predictable and reliable result, which is absolutely necessary when preparing a Thanksgiving feast for a crowd of 20 or 30 convives. In addition, we’ve grown to like it better (perhaps because we know it will always set, unlike pumpkin?).

Maggie’s sure-fire short or flaky pie crust

250 g flour (farine patissière)
125 g butter (room temperature)
Pinch of salt
Cold water

Place flour and salt in mixing bowl. Mix well. Chop butter into large lumps and add to flour.

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Invention through sloth: a recipe for lazy people who really would like to eat a healthy breakfast but can’t manage it

Cappuccino oats.

We don’t stop hearing about oats — they’re full of fiber so they’re good for your digestion and your bowels, they contain beta-glucans that help cut cholesterol and spread the rise in blood sugar over a long period of time, they make you feel full for longer so they encourage weight loss, they are anticarcinogenic thanks to their phytochemicals — and the list goes on.

Confession to my mother and request for forgiveness

I try and eat my oats every day, really I do. It has always been one of my mother’s Golden Rules of Healthy Eating. But Mom, I have to tell you: sometimes I just don’t, because I’m absolutely, unequivocally not a morning person and I just can’t get it together to cook the oats the good old-fashioned Scottish way we might all prefer.

So Mom, to relieve this deep guilt I have lived with my entire adult life, I found the solution, though I admit more by sloth than by wit. It was one of those days when no one was to speak to me before noon. I decided to pour some dry steel-cut oats into a bowl and eat them dry, in order to avoid the risk of pouring milk all over the stovetop instead of into the pan it was meant for, and then adding oats and other necessary ingredients into the milk that was already running down the front of the kitchen cabinets (I have already experienced this and it is not a good way to start the day). I was absolutely incapable of giving them the loving care they so deserve.

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