Swiss Recipes | Page 5 of 5 | The Rambling Epicure

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

Published by Jonell Galloway + 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.

Switzerland: Tomatoes and Swiss Chard, and it’s in Season!

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, August 16, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Swiss chard, along with kale, mustard greens and collard greens, is one of several leafy green vegetables often referred to as “greens”. It is a tall leafy green vegetable with a thick, crunchy stalk that comes in white, red or yellow with wide fan-like green leaves.

The Swiss variety tends to have whitish stems not dissimilar to green celery but wider and somewhat fan-shaped, while the varieties found in North America can be red, purpose or yellow. Some say chard is second only to spinach in terms of nutrients, and it is certainly full of fiber and phytonutrients.

When choosing chard, make sure the leaves are not wilted and the stems look fresh and crisp. If it looks limp in any way, pass it up.

It is one of the few vegetables that probably shouldn’t be eaten raw, due to its high acid content.

Although it is referred to as “Swiss” chard, it isn’t actually native to Switzerland. It is a Mediterranean vegetable. Already in the fourth century B.C., Aristotle wrote about “chard”, the common name used in the Mediterranean region. It probably got its name from a vegetable that it resembles, the cardoon. It is thought that the French confused the two and ended up calling them both “charde”.

In modern times, the French call Swiss chard blettes, the Swiss call them côtes de bettes, and, funnily enough, the English-speaking world has kept the name closest to the original used in ancient times: chard.

Its actual homeland lies farther south, in the Mediterranean region; in fact, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about chard in the fourth century B.C. This is not surprising given the fact that the ancient Greeks, and later the Romans, honored chard for its medicinal properties. Chard got its common name from another Mediterranean vegetable, cardoon, a celery-like plant with thick stalks that resemble those of chard. The French got the two confused and called them both “carde.”

Swiss chard is in season for a good deal of the year in Switzerland, but this recipe takes advantage of summer to use some of those divine tomatoes that embellish the farmers markets.

In winter, it can be mixed with potatoes to make a lovely purée or soup.

Recipe

Tomatoes and Swiss Chard

Ingredients

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1 Tbsp. cooking oil

1 kg Swiss chard

500 g ripe tomatoes

1 tsp. sea salt

Pepper to taste

Heat oil to medium low in a Dutch oven.

In the meantime, bring a large soup pan of water to boil.

Scrape any mud or black spots off Swiss chard. Wash carefully.

Cut stems into 2 cm long chunks.

Add Swiss chard to warm oil.

Sautée for 2 minutes, stirring all the time.

Wash tomatoes.

Drop tomatoes into boiling water for 30 seconds or until skin starts to crack.

Remove tomatoes from boiling water, and run under cold water, carefully removing the skins with fingers.

Squeeze to remove seeds or scrape out seeds with end of a knife.

Chop finely.

Add tomatoes to Swiss chard. Mix well.

Add sea salt and pepper to taste. Continue mixing.

Turn heat down to low and cover Dutch oven. Cook slowly for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on whether you prefer it crunchy or less crunchy.

Serve hot.

Suggestion: For a livelier version, add garlic and garam masala.

Suggestion: To make this in to a vegetarian meal, add borlotti, cannellini beans or garbanzo beans and sprinkle with grated cheese.

Switzerland: Pan-fried Sérac Cheese & Potato Salad Recipe

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, August 5, 2011 Permalink 0

Spontaneous Cuisine, by Jonell Galloway

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 FribourgRegion tourist office.

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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Switzerland: Spontaneous Cuisine: Fresh fruit croûte

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, August 5, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Cheese Croûtes, a Perfect Winter Snack

Anyone who’s every traveled or skied in Switzerland knows we love croûte. Every ski station restaurant offers a wide range of croûtes. But what exactly is a croûte, you might ask.

: A classic cheese croûte from the Refuge de Chesery

Literally, the word means “crust,” but in practice the dish is usually made with day-old bread, onto which a wide array of foodstuff can be placed. The classic croûtes are layers of toasted bread in a shallow baking dish, covered with any combination of ham, bacon, egg, cheese, tomatoes, etc., but never leaving out the cheese.

For these savory dishes, the bread is cut into slices about 1 cm thick and placed in a buttered shallow baking dish. The bread is browned on both sides in the oven, and then slightly dampened with a little white wine or water. Thin slices of a fatty, hard cheese, such as Gruyère or Emmental, are then distributed evenly over the toast, pepper is added (and other ingredients if desired), and the composition is popped back into the oven until the cheese melts and turns brown.

Because of the oven and the hot cheese, winter croûtes are certainly not appropriate for getting your kids in the kitchen, so I’ve come up with this summer version.

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The Rambling Epicure Voices

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, February 7, 2011 Permalink 0

Jenn 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.