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…

Creative ways to use vinegar in cooking, in place of fats

I’m a vinegar collector. I have orange vinegar, walnut vinegar, grapefruit vinegar, a long list of Balsamic vinegars of various origins and ages, and lots of other more common ones.

In Switzerland and France, there is such an impressive variety of artisanal vinegars (a well as oils) that it is easy to build up quite a collection and use it in creative ways to liven up winter vegetables, bland grilled meats, or salads. The beauty of it is that you can often use vinegar to add flavor, and thereby avoid the more traditional use of butter or meat bases, which contain fat. It is a good way to reduce fat in your general cooking habits.

Photo courtesy of FivePrime.

A tasty, good quality vinegar is an easy way to add flavor to an otherwise unappetizing vegetable or meat. After cooking meat or fish, I often deglaze the frying pan  with a nice vinegar, then pour the glaze over the beast in question, along with a drizzle of good quality olive oil. It makes for a much healthier sauce than cream or butter and adds flare to the dish.

With magret de canard, or duck breast, which can have quite a fatty taste, I pour off most of the fat, and then deglaze the drippings with Balsamic or sherry vinegar. Raspberry also works well with duck, and you can add a few crushed raspberries to the sauce as well. The vinegar helps cut the fatty film you often feel in your mouth after eating. Raspberry vinegar is also a perfect compliment to calves’ liver.

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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.

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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:

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