Swiss Sérac cheese, a fresh cow’s milk cheese made with whey

Whey cheese is produced when the curds are separated from the whey to make cheese. Ricotta is also a whey cheese, but unlike Sérac, it is often made with sheep’s milk. As a result, you can use your local cheesemonger’s Sérac in most recipes that call for ricotta.

Photo courtesy of Fribourg Region tourist office.

Sérac is made in most regions of Switzerland, and each region has its own version. Some regions smoke it; others flavor it with herbs, spices or pepper.

Sérac cheese is soft and creamy in texture, so it is easy to spread it on bread to make a healthy sandwich or snack, but Sérac is not only a snack cheese. It can also be used to make healthy, quick meals, such as the recipe below. In the summertime, I often use it like mozzarella, with tomatoes and basil or other Italian-inspired recipes.

It is a great way of teaching your children to eat healthy snacks. Top it with fresh fruit to make a healthy, low-fat dessert, or use it for between-meal snacks on chunky whole-grain bread.

Since it is a fresh milk cheese, it does not keep, and should be eaten shortly after purchasing. Because it is made from fresh milk whey, it is also naturally low in fat. In Switzerland, it would have about a 3.8% fat content, the same as milk.

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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.

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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

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.

Soup photo courtesy of Five Prime.

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

Who poured the boiling soup on the head of the Savoyard?

Legend has it that a certain Huguenot, Catherine Royaume, who had sought refuge in Geneva after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, threw a pot of her boiling vegetable soup on the head of a Savoyard soldier as he and his mates were trying to besiege Geneva. This happened during the night of 11-12 December 1602. Ever since, she has been known as the Mère Royaume, or “Mother Royaume.”

Photo courtesy of FotoSearch.

And ever since, 12 December has been a day of celebration, referred to as the Escalade, which means literally “climbing,” as in rock climbing. In 1602, Geneva was surrounded by high stone ramparts and circled by several concentric high stone walls, so the poor guy who had the boiling soup poured over his head already had a hard day of climbing behind him.

Ingredients in La Mère Royaume’s cast iron cauldron

Geneva was quite a different place then. According to the food La Cocagne cooperative, people ate vegetable soup at every meal, so there was always a big iron cauldron or marmite on the fire. The vegetables changed according to the season, and on special occasions or Sundays, the more fortunate threw a piece of meat into the pot. Times were often hard after the arrival of the Huguenots and other Protestants, so the Genevois started importing rice from Italy and lentils from all over to help fill all the refugee bellies.

The vegetable soup of a cold December in 1602 was quite different from any vegetable soup we would eat today. It was not a velouté or a bouillon with a few drops of truffle oil. There was no fresh green asparagus imported from Peru.

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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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Swiss recipes: FXcuisine

Photo courtesy of FXcuisine.

With a background in international finance and law, François Xavier, who is Swiss, publishes two recipes a week.

His Swiss apple roesti is an amazingly simple, but tasty recipe, which he demonstrates in a witty video.

His recipe for Swiss apple pasta (see photo at left) is an interesting twist on a traditional Swiss dish, spätzle. Both are seasonal, because it is certainly Apple Time.

Kids in the kitchen: Oui, Chef

Photo courtesy of Steve Dunn, Oui, Chef.

A former banker, Steve Dunn is based in Paris. He has five children, and for the last two years has devoted himself to teaching them how to cook and eat right, with recipes such as his bran muffins even your kids will like recipe.

His farmers market cheddar melt is full of interesting, contrasting flavors that are healthy as can be. His butternut soup with apple cider cream recipe is both seasonal and interesting.

For scrumptious takes on traditional British desserts: Woody the Foodie

Woody gathers recipes from chefs he admires. His sticky chocolate and toffee pudding recipe, inspired from Gordon Ramsay, is a masterpiece of a recipe, as is his chocolate bread and butter pudding, based on a James Martin recipe from the BBC food site.

Photo courtesy of Woody the Foodie.

Take 4 thick dry or toasted  slices of hearty whole grain bread and tear it into bite-size pieces. Drizzle olive oil over it and add 2 to 4 cloves of crushed garlic, depending on how much you like garlic.

Photo courtesy of Stu Spivack.

Mix and let it sit for a few minutes.

Take 8 large, extra-ripe red tomatoes. Cut into large chunks, and save all the juice. Mix into the bread and garlic.

Put into blender, with salt and pepper. Refrigerate and let it sit for a half hour or so, or several hours or overnight if possible.

Before serving, taste and then season with more salt, pepper and olive oil if necessary. Add ice cubes if you want it to be colder or thinner.

If you want to give the dish a bit of color or enhance it, add fresh coriander or basil, or a dollop of cream.

This batch will easily feed 4 or 5, and is better the second day, once it has marinated in the refrigerator.

This recipe is my version of a friend’s recipe for Seville-style gazpacho. The friend has chosen to remain incognito for reasons unknown to this writer.

Mezze: summer vegetables with a new twist for your picnics

What are summer vegetables for us are year-long vegetables for the Lebanese and Syrians.

Choosing your courgettes or zucchini

Zucchini should be dark green and firm to the touch. Avoid wrinkly-looking courgettes, which are not fresh.

Choose young, small ones. The taste is more delicate and sweeter. Larger older courgettes often have large seeds, and tend to be bitter.

Recipe for mezze-style courgette (zucchini) salad

This is a kid-friendly recipe.

Wash 2 kg of zucchini, using a brush to gently scrape off dirt.

Cut into large cubes. Steam until just cooked, but still a little crunchy. Drain if they are watery.

Put steamed cubes in a large mixing bowl and mash with a large fork, or purée in a moulinette or food processor, until smooth with no lumps. Be careful not to overdo it or it will turn liquidy.

In a separate mixing bowl, add 8 tablespoons of tahini (sesame paste; can be found in foreign food section of most large supermarkets or in Oriental stores) or sesame oil, 1 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice and 6 to 8 cloves of garlic. Salt to taste.

Add sauce to zucchini. Mix. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Put into serving dish.

Drizzle with olive oil and add Sicilian or Italian cherry tomatoes to decorate. It can also be sprinked with chopped Italian (flat) parsley to add more color and vitamins.