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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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.

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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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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.

After my lengthy post Potatoes: endless varieties in Switzerland of 14 September 2009, it is only logical that I give you a few ideas about how to use all those varieties of potatoes.

I’ll start by the thoroughly Swiss dish, rösti.

Photo courtesy of Restaurant Anker Bern.

Rösti is definitely a Swiss dish, but there as many variations as there are cantons in Switzerland. The Restaurant Anker Bern in Bern lists nearly 30 different versions on its menu. The main difference lies in whether to use raw or cooked potatoes, as well as in what is added to the potatoes.

Historically, rösti was breakfast food

At the beginning of the 19th century, rösti was the main breakfast fare in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and probably started in the rural areas around Zurich. They ate it with café au lait. Gradually it moved south towards the Alps, then to Bern where it was given the name it now bears, “rösti”. From Bern it moved towards the French-speaking areas, toward canton Vaud, where it eventually replaced their traditional morning soup.

Recipe for Bern-style rösti

Rösti à la Bernoise, or Bern-style rösti, is made with potatoes cooked in their skins; the potatoes are cooked the day before, so that they are cold and can be easily grated.

The first thing you need to purchase is a special rösti potato grater, called a kartofell in German and râpe à rösti in French. What differentiates it from other graters is its big holes. Smaller holes will give you an effect more like American-style hashbrowns.

This recipe is inspired by the Restaurant Anker Bern’s recipe.

Cook 1 kg of potatoes the day before. I would suggest steaming them in a double-walled Kuhn Rikon Durotherm pan, with as little water as possible, so that they don’t absorb too much water and maintain a maximum of their vitamins. Cook them until they are done, but still quite quite firm. Put in refrigerator overnight.

The next day, peel the potatoes, by hand if possible. Use a rösti grater to grate into large strips, as long as possible. Mix with 1 tsp salt.

Over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of lard (saindoux) (the pork butcher or regular butcher can sell this in small quantities) in a cast iron or aluminum frying pan, such as a Swiss Diamond.

Buy a thick slab of bacon (lard) from the pork butcher, around 50 g. Chop into small bits, removing any hard rind.

Add bacon and potatoes to frying pan. Mix slowly, turning gently from time to time with a rubber spatula (metal will scratch a non-stick surface).

After it has started to cook, mash it down with the spatula, so that it forms a large “pancake”. Lower to medium low heat and cover. If it starts to burn, lower heat even further.

After 10 minutes, cover pan with a serving dish of the appropriate size and turn rösti onto a plate, upside down. Carefully slide back into frying pan, with the unbrowned side down, and cover.

The rösti should be golden brown on both sides.

After 10 minutes, pour 2 tablespoons of milk over the rösti. Cook for 10 more minutes. Gently slide it onto a plate and serve.

Firm (but not extra-firm), type B potatoes, such as the Sirtema, Christa, Ostara, Agria, Urgenta, Bintje and Désirée varieties, are ideal for this dish.

Restaurant Anker Bern
B. and S. Bill
Kornhausplatz 16
3011 Bern
T. +41 (0)31 311 11 13
F. +41 (0)31 311 11 71

Opening hours:
Monday-Thursday: 7:30-23:30 H
Friday-Saturday: 7:30-0:30 H
Sunday: 9:30-18 H

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