A Proper Swiss Cheese Fondue

(The 10 year anniversary of JustHungry is at the end of this month. To commemorate this pretty big birthday for the site, I’m highlighting some of my favorite posts from the archives. This recipe is for an authentic Swiss cheese fondue. It was my late mother in law Martha’s recipe. It’s perfect for a chilly evening. Originally published on December 26, 2008, one year after Martha passed away.)

Martha passed away on the 26th of December last year. When she was still healthy, we shared many a pot of cheese fondue with her during the cold winter months. Her fondue was without question, the best I’ve ever had anywhere. So in her memory, we made a proper cheese fondue.

I’ve already posted Martha’s fondue recipe 5 years ago (she was still making them then), but since it was one of the very early posts here on Just Hungry, it has no relevant picture to accompany the recipe or anything. To rectify that, here again is Martha’s proper Swiss fondue, with many photos and detailed instructions.

Cheese fondue is a traditional Swiss dish that originated in the Alps, mainly in and around the canton of Valais (French) / Wallis (German). Contrary to popular view outside of Switzerland, it did not originate as an après-ski snack; it’s a hearty peasant dish, using ingredients that were available in the winter: cheese, wine, coarse peasant bread. And since it a traditional dish, it never went ‘out of fashion’ or ‘died out’, as you might think it did if you live in the UK or the US or any place that had the Great Fondue Craze of the ’70s, when a fondue set was a ubiquitous wedding present.

In Switzerland, ‘la fondue’ means a cheese fondue and nothing else. Other types of dip-bits-of-food-in-a-communal-pot dishes are specifically called fondue-something, e.g. fondue bourgignonne (bits of beef filet fried in a pot of oil), fondue chinoise (thin slices of beef or other things cooked in a pot of broth), and so on. (You might be surprised to know that chocolate fondue isn’t that popular in Switzerland. It may be served at touristy restaurants here, but is not a home cooking fixture by any means.)

Finally, fondue is always served as the main dish, not an appetizer or as part of a multicourse meal.

So, what do you need for la fondue? First you need an appropriately shaped pot. The traditional shape is a fairly shallow, rounded ceramic pot with handle, like this one. The critical part is the rounded part, as we’ll see later. This is one of the two pots we have.

You also need something to keep the cheese warm. You actually cook the sauce on the stovetop, so you don’t need a tabletop burner, though you can use one on a low flame. The ideal is a spirit burner, like this one. The pot is suspended over it on the iron frame.

Finally you need fondue forks. Fondue forks are long and thin, perfect for skewering the bread. (Antique chipped hand-me-down plate is optional.)

The cheese sauce is usually made up of 2 or more types of cheese. A good moderately aged Gruyère (aged at least 8 to 12 months) is usually one of them, since it has such great flavor.

Another popular cheese is Emmenthaler, the stereotypical ‘Swiss cheese’ with the big holes. Emmenthaler does make the sauce very stringy and somewhat gooey, which can make it a bit hard to handle.

Martha’s preference was to use Vacherin Fribourgeois, which has a full, distinctive flavor and does not make the sauce stringy.

Her secret ingredient was one block of the ‘spreadable cheese’ that comes wrapped in foil triangles in a round cardboard box (e.g. Laughing Cow). The otherwise icky cheese helps all the cheeses melt together and stay together coherently.

The other important components in a fondue sauce are white wine and kirsch. Here in Switzerland, a young Chasselas Romand, aka Fendant, with a slight sourness is used. If you can’t get hold of such a wine, a Sauvignon Blanc will do, perhaps with a squeeze of lemon juice. And kirsch just adds that extra kick.

In Switzerland, only bread is dipped into the cheese. Any kind of bread with a sturdy crust and a fairly robust crumb is good: a decent baguette, any kind of ‘artisan’ bread. Here we used a Weizenbrot, a hearty country bread. Notice all the pieces are cut so they each have a side with crust.

I guess you could dip other things, but you will still want to have a good quantity of bread. I know people like to dip things like raw or boiled vegetables, apple or pear slices and the like (in Japan they like to dip things like boiled quail eggs, wiener sausages and chikuwa (fish sausage-like things)…), but I think that if you need vegetable crudités or fruit, they are best served alongside the fondue, and to just dip bread in the sauce. (And if you get invited to a Swiss home for fondue, you’ll only get bread in most cases.) If you are gluten-intolerant, use a gluten-free bread.

So, let’s make fondue!

This amount of sauce will serve 4 people as the main course. If you only intend to have fondue as part of a bigger meal, adjust the amounts accordingly.

1 garlic clove50ml / about 1/4 cup kirsh2 tsp. cornstarch 400 g / a bit less than 1 lb Gruyère cheese (aged at least 8 to 12 months), shredded 400g / a bit less than 1 l Emmenthaler or Vacherin Fribourgeois cheese, shredded (Please use real Emmenthaler. A generic ‘Swiss Cheese’ will not do. Note that in Switzerland you can buy bags of pre-shredded mixed cheese called “Moitié-moitié”, meaning ‘half and half’.) 1 piece of ‘spreadable’ cheese, e.g. Laughing Cow/La Vache Qui Rit (not the mini-Babybel type, the triangular foil-wrapped soft gooey double-creme type) 3 dl / 1 1/4 US cups of young slightly sour white wine such as Chasselas or Sauvignon Blanc

Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic clove. Discard the garlic. (This optional step adds a little extra flavor to the sauce.)

Dissolve the cornstarch in the kirsch. Set aside.

Put the fondue pot on a medium-heat. Add the wine and cheeses. Heat while stirring, until the cheeses melt. Add the kirsch and keep stirring until the sauce is smooth and bubbly. This takes about 20 minutes.

Now, set up your fondue pot stand and burner and transfer the pot to the stand. The burner flame (or tabletop cooker) should just be hot enough that the sauce stays how and just sort of seething on the surface. Any hotter and the cheese will burn on the bottom.

Take a piece of bread, and spear it firmly on the fork so that the crust is on the outside. You can optionally lightly dip it in kirsch at this stage.

Take your speared-bread fork and stir it around in the cheese sauce. Each person should scrape the sides and the bottom of the pot at least once with each go. This prevents the cheese sauce from sticking or burning on the sides. None of that namby-pamby dip-and-go!

Here the bread being used to scrape off the cheese bits that stick to the surface of the pot. Now you see why a rounded-sides pot is ideal; a pot with sharp angles is much harder to scrape around properly.

If you do insist on dipping other things into the sauce, you will just want to dip those lightly, but still use the bread for that stir-wipe action.

(A point of etiquette: Pull the bread off the fork with your teeth, trying not to touch the fork itself with your mouth. And absolutely no double-dipping!)

As the cheese sauce gets less and less, it will get thicker. It’s important to keep stirring-wiping. You may gradually want to lower the flame’s intensity if you can too.

When there’s just a little cheese left in the pot, turn off the heat. Keep scraping off the cheese. If you’ve done it right, you’ll just be left with a small circle of burnt on cheese, which you can carefully pry off. (Note how the pot is scraped almost clean.)

The burned bit is considered to be the final treat of a fondue. A generous cook may cut it up and share it, but a more selfish one (cough) will just pop the whole thing in her mouth.

So, there you have it. A proper Swiss cheese fondue, eaten the Swiss way.

The same wine that you put into the fondue would be perfect. You could also have kirsch in shot glasses. Martha always served strong black tea, which served as a perfect palate cleanser to counteract the strong taste of the cheese sauce.

The winter fruit salad she also served as dessert (usually just whatever citrus fruits were available, like grapefruit, blood or regular orange, etc.) was a nice refreshing ending to the meal.

Do remember that this sauce is properly cooked on the stovetop, not just heated through until the cheese melts, so most of the alcohol content will evaporate. Swiss kids eat fondue along with the adults and grow up to be fine upstanding citizens. If you can’t have alcohol for religious reasons and so on, this recipe may not be for you.

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Matcha Roll (Green Tea Swiss Roll)

After a long hiatus, my baking contributor Siew Loon is finally back in action. She baked us a nice Match Roll, or Green Tea Swiss Roll. Green Tea is widely used in Japanese cuisine, especially in desserts and baking. Get a cup of tea or coffee, sit back, and enjoy!

Contributor: Ho Siew Loon

I am finally back after a very long break. Lately, I have been spending quite a lot of my time experimenting with Japanese cooking and baking. I love Japanese pastries and cakes and it is simply irresistible. It is just so perfect and delicate. One of my favorites is the Matcha Roll and it is always on my TO EAT list whenever I visit Japan.

After some trial and error, I finally get the Matcha Roll recipe that I love. And I wanted to share it with the readers on Rasa Malaysia. Matcha roll is actually a combination of cottony soft sponge cake rolled with fresh cream and cooked adzuki beans (red beans). It is so soft and moist that the cake is gone the very moment you slice it for serving.

(Click Page 2 for the Matcha Roll Recipe)

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Ramp and Swiss Chard Dumplings

It’s ramp season in New York! Earlier yesterday, my neighborhood co-op tweeted that they just got a shipment of ramps in stock, which my friend Barb relayed to me via text. I was working on taxes at the time and wading through a mountain of receipts, so I was more than happy for an excuse to escape spreadsheets for a while and stroll (okay, powerwalk) to the store.

Ramps, also known as wild leeks, are pretty much in season for about 3 weeks here, making them highly sought after by chefs and anyone crazy enough about food to follow farmers markets and co-ops on Twitter. They’re grown only in the eastern part of the US and Canada, so the year I spent in San Francisco, land of copious farmers markets, was sadly ramp-free. The flavor of ramps is a like a combination of garlic and onion, with a mellow earthy flavor. You can use it in anything you would normally use onions, scallions, leeks, and garlic in, such as omelets, savory tarts, pasta dishes, and pizza.

Today I decided to make dumplings with ramps and an especially pretty bunch of Swiss chard that was also in the store.

For the dumpling filling, I sautéed the leaves of the chard and chopped ramps with some cremini mushrooms. I added a bit of sugar to balance out of tiny amount of bitterness in the Swiss chard leaves. (With the leftover chard stems, I made roasted them with Parmesan following this post on Kalyn’s Kitchen. So delicious.)

What’s amazing about the ramps is that they lent so much flavor to the dumpling filling that I didn’t need to add salt or pepper. I had a whole plate of cooked dumplings without  even dipping them in soy sauce, they were that flavorful. (Though of course you can if you’d like.) And this is coming from someone who is a salt fiend.

So if you’d like to try making these dumplings with ramps, follow the recipe below with a link to the step-by-step folding guide. If you’re reading this sometime in the future, well past spring, you can substitute the ramps with scallions, shallots, or leeks, plus a bit of garlic.

And fellow ramp enthusiasts, what are you planning on making with ramps during these next few weeks?

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Ramp and Swiss Chard Dumplings

Makes 30 to 40 dumplings

1 small bunch ramps (about 1/4 pound or even a little less)1 large bunch Swiss chard4 to 5 cremini mushrooms (optional)2 tablespoons vegetable oil1 1/2 teaspoons sugar1 pack store-bought dumpling wrappersRemove the roots of the ramps and discard. Finely chop both the stems and leaves. Separate the Swiss chard leaves from the stems. Chop the leaves into small bite-sized pieces and save the stems for roasting, vegetable stock, or discard. Finely chop the mushrooms.Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-low to medium heat. Sauté the ramps for about 1 minute, until very aromatic. Add the mushrooms and cook for another minute. Add the Swiss chard leaves and allow them to cook down for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the sugar and mix well. Transfer the vegetable filling to a plate to cool.If you’re just starting out with dumpling folding, follow this step-by-step guide that shows a basic method with 3 pleats per dumpling. Using the same guide, if you’d like to work your way up to 5 pleats, start in the middle and do 3 pleats towards the middle from one direction and and 2 pleats toward the middle from the other. For 7, like the dumplings in the header photo, make 4 smaller pleats from the one direction and 3 from the other.Pan-frying*: Have about 1/3 cup water, a large skillet, and a lid for the skillet handy. Heat the skillet with the remaining 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil over high heat and swirl the oil around the pan. Wait about 1 minute for the oil to heat up. (You can also use a small piece of extra dumpling wrapper or piece of bread to test whether the pan is hot enough; it should sizzle immediately upon being placed in the pan.)  Once the pan is hot, place the number of dumplings you want to cook smooth side down in the pan. Allow them to sear for about 1 minute, until the bottoms turn golden brown.Add the water, cover immediately with a lid, and let the dumplings steam for another 3 to 4 minutes. Uncover the lid to allow any extra water to evaporate before turning off the heat.  Loosen the dumplings with a spatula and transfer them to a plate. (Whatever you don’t cook can be frozen for later. Dumplings can be put on the pan frozen, no defrosting required. Just add one extra minute of steaming.)Transfer to serving plates, and serve with alone or soy sauce.

*Note: To boil the dumplings instead, bring a pot of water to boil. Add dumplings and simmer for 3 minutes. Drain well.

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More dumpling recipes:

More ramp recipes:

Tagged as: Appetizers, Dumplings, Recipes, Vegetarian

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Swiss Meringue Frosting Recipe and KitchenAid Luncheon Love

For the last 16 years that we’ve been together, there are a few items that still have made it through the entire decade and half relationship. Our photo albums documenting our mischievous younger days still exist in the back corner of our bookshelf. Two fruit trees in pots that started off on our apartment patio balcony have survived 2 major moves are and are currently flourishing in their final garden spot. And then of course, our KitchenAid stand mixer has stood the test of time over all these years through a bazillion dozen batches of cookies, cupcakes, bread and other culinary concoctions.

Our KitchenAid stand mixer is like a part of the family. It’s one of the few kitchen tools that have and will always be, a permanent part of our life. When we were able to save our pennies together, the first thing we did was to outfit our kitchen with the fundamental tools. Yes, we did this before even ever buying a bed. We slept on the floor for the first 3 years together. But that’s another post.

Anyways, back to the kitchen talk…

When we finally grew out of our first black 5 qt. KitchenAid stand mixer because we had more people to feed, we graduated our kitchen to the Professional 6 qt. KitchenAid stand mixer. Back then, it took us 6 months of saving up our tips (from work) to buy the Cadillac of stand mixers. It was like having a trophy sitting on our kitchen counter top and to this day, it still has a permanent spot in the kitchen scene.

Now fast forward many years later, we are now thrilled to be partnering with KitchenAid small appliances in our studio. It’s like a dream to be working with not only with small appliances that we love, but also the people behind KitchenAid are wonderful. 

To be partnering with a brand we love and to know that the people who stand behind the product are amazing is certainly dream come true. Rachel Barbarotta is the KitchenAid Community Manager out of Digitas New York, responsible for managing the brands social media channels as well as working closely with bloggers. Miss Rachel Barbarotta is the rock star behind making all this happen. She’s amazing.

So, we partnered with KitchenAid at our studio to host a lunch to celebrate food and friends. We wanted to not only bring new and familiar bloggers together for an afternoon of community and friendship, but also to share the wonderful new KitchenAid 7-qt. Stand Mixer and 13-Cup Food Processor.

Group shot L-R : Todd, Joy, Cristina, camera shy Diane, Rachel, Alex

To make this afternoon even more fun, we invited dear friends Cristina Ferrare, Alex Thomopoulos and Joy Wilson to share a recipe demo. From Cristina’s book, Big Bowl of Love, Cristina shared her potato plates recipe and her daughter Alex shared a fabulous cucumber and zucchini carpaccio.

Joy Wilson’s  new cookbook was just released the day before (congrats Joy!) and she shared her cupcake recipes, along with her wonderful butter cream frosting and swiss meringue frosting. You must make her frostings and cupcakes. The recipes are wonderful.

We shared a little ourselves with a presentation on our journey through photography, video, storytelling and why there is no such thing as an perfect photograph.

And a celebration of food friends, KitchenAid giveaways, music, and great food wouldn’t be complete without cupcakes which everyone had fun decorating in their own personal style. Lots of sprinkles were included!

Thanks for listening to our KitchenAid stand mixer story. Do you have one to share? would love to hear.

Thank you KitchenAid, Rachel, Cristina, Alex, Joy and the rest of our guests for making this one of the most amazing days of our lives. You all left us energized, inspired and more in love with this wonderful community of online bloggers like never before.

Forever grateful for you all,

diane and todd

It was a crazy fun afternoon that all happened so quickly, we couldn’t absorb it all. Thankfully, some attendees shared their experience on their blogs, so please stop by and give them a visit to find out more about what the day was like! 

Fun album of pictures! ( lots of them, might be very very slow loading.)  *Joy’s Swiss meringue recipe is at bottom  *Photo credit: Anson Cu

day before Cristina and Nancy baked a gazillion cupcakes 

set up, calm before the storm 

Miss Alex kick starts the morning, before she’s had her coffee 

checking in guests & gift bags

morning mingle 

juicing fresh oranges & oro blanco from KitchenAid Citrus Juicer attachment 

pretty people

Todd & Diane present their photo talk on storytelling

 more gorgeous ladies

 glowing beauties 

Cristina gives the first demo to food paparazzi 

Cristina slicing up potatoes for her AMAZING potato plates from her cookbook 

Alex is up next…

…making her stunning cucumber & zucchini carpaccio

Cristina and Alex: mother daughter having fun in the kitchen 

Lunch: exceptionally delicious dishes made by Cristina and Alex 

Joy’s turn! 

Joy shares her stories as she makes swiss meringue frosting 

… and sharing her buttercream frosting recipe too 

… ta da! the money shot… swiss meringue frosting for the camera ready crowd 

naked cupcakes in need of frosting and sprinkle love 

sweet moment: Joy & Cristina signing books for one another. Awww…. 

rock stars 

Let the cupcake party begin

& the crowd goes wild for cupcakes 

nicest people. ever. 

Rachel, Todd & Diane teasing during the KitchenAid giveaways 

The End. Thank you KitchenAid for making this luncheon for making all this fun happen. xoxo 

 Print This Recipe

Joy the Baker‘s Swiss Meringue Frosting
enough frosting for 24 cupcakes

 4 large egg whites1 1/2 cups granulated sugar1/2 cup light corn syruplarge pinch of salt2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract In a large pot, bring about 2 inches of water to a simmer.In a large, heat-proof bowl, whisk together egg whites, sugar, corn syrup and salt.  The mixture will be grainy, because of the sugar.Place bowl over simmering water and whisk as it heats.  The sugar will dissolve after about 5 minutes.  Keep and eye on the mixture, it shouldn’t get warm enough to cook the eggs.  Yucky.Transfer the egg white and sugar mixture to the bowl of an electric stand mixer.  With a whisk attachment, beat the egg whites, on high, until stiff peaks form (about 5 minutes)  The mixture will be fluffy and glossy and look like melted marshmallows.  It’ll be sticky too.  Beat in the vanilla extract last.   Cover, and set aside until ready to frost cupcakes.

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