Switzerland: Rosa’s Musings: Butterzopf, The History Of A National Sunday Bread

Published by Saturday, October 1, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

Switzerland (also known as “Confoederatio Helvetica” or “die Schweiz”, “la Suisse”, “Svizzera”, “Svizra”) is a federal republic composed of 26 cantons and 4 different linguistic and cultural areas (German, French, Italian and Romansch). It’s therefore not surprising if its cuisine reflects its rich heritage and highly diverse cultures. It is rather like an island in the middle of Europe, like a tiny kingdom.

Each region and canton has its very own traditional dishes and specialties as well as produce, and they defend and even protect it fiercely, because there are dishes, cheeses, wines, breads, and many more food items that are now protected by AOCs in Switzerland.

Even if this tiny piece of land stuck between Germany, Austria, France, Italy has its own highly diverse culinary identity, one cannot refute that each part of the Swiss Confederation has, to a certain extent, been influenced by its neighbors, and vice versa. For example, a sausage resembling the anise-flavored Geneva sausage called Longeole can also be found in Chablais (Haute-Savoie); a cheese similar to Valais raclette is made in Savoie too; the Swiss German spätzli seem to be of Swabian (German) origin. Then there is polenta or risotto which evoke the Apennine Penninsula, and are often found in Ticino, and, well, the list goes on. As it is the case with every place that is not in total isolation, the borders are quite permeable, so it is pretty understandable that ideas, information, arts and science cross back and forth across the borders.

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Switzerland: Coop’s Pro Montagna Label: 5 Years of Protecting Traditional Swiss Food Products

Published by Friday, September 30, 2011 Permalink 0

Switzerland: Coop’s Pro Montagna Label: 5 Years of Protecting Traditional Swiss Food Products

Please join us on Sunday, October 2nd, at the Expat Expo Geneva, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Palexpo, Hall 7. We’d love to meet our readers and make our contact more personal.

We’ll have booth No. B8 against the well, and one of our most popular authors, Rosa Mayland of the column Rosa’s Musings,will be present.

Click here for all the details.

Hope to see you there!

Jonell Galloway, Editor of The Rambling Epicure

 

 

 

 

 

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Rosa’s Musings: The Last Of The Summer Days Have Arrived, Indulge In Tomatoes while You Still Can

Published by Wednesday, September 14, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

Spontaneous Cuisine: Raw Tomato Sauce

 

I don’t know if you have the same uncomfortable feeling as I, but I have the impression this year is flying by, and that we are more than ever racing against time, without being able to get a grip on the present moment or connect with the now. It is insane and quite confusing…

As incredible and shocking as it might seem, September has already arrived and so has autumn (and by the way, just in case you have already got the creeps, we are dangerously approaching Christmas – only 3 1/2 months to go before the ludicrous craze!). Even if you try “lying” to yourself, you cannot do anything other than confirm that the hot season is over and the slow decline of nature is taking its toll. As sad as it might sound, we have no other choice than to bid goodbye to the joys of summer and to the delightful sensation of lightness as well as worry-free days, it is a harbinger for the cold, dark, gloomy days that gently weasel their way into our lives. All those changes are real, visible and can be perceived very clearly.

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Rosa’s Musings: Swiss Sausage Salad, An Unforgettable Food Experience

Published by Monday, August 22, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

This year, unlike all preceding years, I decided that I’d serve a Swiss menu for our National Day as I believe there is no better way to feel close to your roots than by cooking the foods that are a part of your identity. I also had the urge to share a traditional and summery Swiss recipe with you.

The date marks the death of the first German Emperor from the house of the Hapsburgs, the independence of Switzerland from the Austrian rulers, the alliance of the rural communes Schwytz, Uri and Unterwalden (central Alps) with a view to protecting themselves from outside attackers or anyone attempting to subject them, and the creation of the Federal Charter of 1291, a pact which ensured free trade and peace on the important mountain merchant routes.

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Rosa’s Musings: My Swiss Grandmother’s Cooking: the Deep Roots, Bonds and Nostalgia of Food

Published by Tuesday, June 28, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

My Swiss Grandmother and Her Glorious Cuisine

“As a grandmother of six, I believe that it is crucial that we make time to pass on our recipes, cooking and growing skills and other crafts to our grandchildren.”— Darina Allen, president of Slow Food Ireland

Grandmothers link us to our culinary heritage

In our modern world, most women choose or have to work, and countless couples don’t have the time or energy to become kitchen bees. Many people prefer buying prepackaged food and don’t see any point in spending their free time preparing homemade snacks. The majority of 21st-century grandmothers hail from a generation of females who cut themselves off from old traditions, therefore nowadays, very few kids are lucky enough to have grandmothers* who cook or enjoy cooking, and who are able to share their family’s culinary legacy with their grandchildren.

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Rosa’s Musings: 13 ways to eat on a budget and improve your health at the same time

Published by Thursday, March 3, 2011 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

Good food and good eating aren’t a class thing – anyone can eat good food on any budget as long as they know how to cook.— Jamie Oliver

Eating on a budget and improving your health at the same time

A tight budget but a broad mind: Eating humbly and responsibly without decreasing your pleasure and health

Unfortunately too many people have the preconceived idea that eating healthily and with indulgence is synonymous with expensive, and believe that spending less money on food implies that your dinners will be dreadfully bland and grimly boring. Well, today I am about to break with the big myth and set the records straight by showing you how being limited financially doesn’t mean you have to eat like an austere monk on a strict diet or a New Age prophet living on love and fresh air, nor restrain your kitchen activity and stop inventing dishes. Quite the contrary!

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The Rambling Epicure Voices

Published by Monday, February 7, 2011 Permalink 0

Food writer, Culinary Chemistry, The Rambling EpicureJenn Oliver writes our column Culinary Chemistry. She has a Ph.D. in science, where she explains the scientific aspects of what really goes on when you cook (the next Harold McGee?). She’s been running a gluten-free blog, Jenn Cuisine, since 2008 and her kitchen is more like a laboratory than a kitchen. She’s focuses her chemical calculations and experiments on figuring out how to make traditionally glutinous food gluten-free.

Esmaa Self writes the Wild Woman on Feral Acres column. She lives on a small farm in Colorado where she employs organic and sustainable methods to grow fruits, vegetables and herbs, raise chickens, bees and fish and where she routinely turns out imaginative, healthy, guilt-free meals from scratch. One of her numerous blogs recounts her farming adventures: Backyard Eggs. She also writes novels and contributes to numerous organic farming and green publications, and runs a sustainable living site, Homeostasis.

Simon de Swaan is Food and Beverage Director at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City. He studied at the Culinary Institute of America and has an incredible collection of antique cookbooks and books about food and eating, from which he often posts interesting and unusual quotes. In his column Simon Says, he gives us daily food quotes from his tomes.

Jean-Philippe de Tonnac is an essayist, editor and journalist. He directed the special editions of the Nouvel Observateur for almost ten years and and has published twenty books. As preparation for publication of his Universal Dictionary of Bread (Dictionnaire universel du pain, Bouquins Laffont, 2010), he obtained a baker’s certificate (CAP) at the Ecole de Boulangerie et Pâtisserie de Paris in 2007, and traveled worldwide to countries where bread held a particular cultural significance.

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Rosa’s Musings: How Lemon Curd Saved My Life, or Cooking as Therapy, by Rosa Mayland

Published by Thursday, January 20, 2011 Permalink 0


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Rosa’s Musings: How Lemon Curd Saved My Life, or Cooking as Therapy, by Rosa Mayland

Cooking is not just a “recreation”: It is therapeutic, and can save your life

Cooking is an art and patience a virtue… Careful shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing — love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist — not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love.Quote by Keith Floyd, A Feast of Floyd

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