Absinthe is a yellowish-green Swiss liqueur made from angelica root, aniseed, fennel, hyssop, liquorice, star aniseed and wormwood. Its taste is a combination of anise and bitter. There are many different brands. Most are green, but some are clear. The green coloration earned it its nickname, “la fée verte” (the green fairy.) A Genuine Absinthe…
Swiss Food
Alessandro Filippini
Alessandro Filippini was a famous chef at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York, and a cookbook author in the second half of the 1800s.
Appenzeller Cheese
Appenzeller cheese has a hard, salty-tasting rind, which can vary in colour from brownish-yellow to orangey. The cheese inside has a pale yellow semi-hard pate with small holes in it.
Appenzeller Cheese Quarter Fat (Räss-Käse / Brown Label)
Appenzeller Räss-Käse (Brown Label) cheese is a lower-fat version of Appenzeller Cheese. It is made from 2% fat milk. It is good in fondues.
Bettelmatt Cheese
Bettelmatt cheese tastes sweet at first when it is young, getting stronger and slightly bitter as it ages.
Cenovis
Cenovis is a dark brown commercial seasoning mix with a strong smell and a salty taste. Like Marmite or Vegemite, it is a yeast extract, made from brewer’s yeast, “plant extracts”, and sea salt. It has a slightly clearer, and slightly smoother taste than Marmite, but as for Marmite or Vegemite, people either love it…
César Ritz: Hotelier to the stars
César Ritz was the first, great modern hotelier. He created the concept of the “grand hotel”, which turned out to also be the perfect stage for the “grande cuisine” being created by his business partner, Auguste Escoffier.
Chue Fladae Cheese
Chue Fladae (aka “Stanser Flada”) is a washed-rind, soft, cheese made by the Josef Barmettler creamery (“molkerei“) in Stans, Switzerland. It is creamy to the point of being runny. Made from raw milk from cows, it is smelly but not overly strong tasting. The cheese is round, weighing from 300 to 350 g. It is…
Cream
Cream © Denzil Green Cream is essentially butterfat suspended in the more watery milk around it. We think of Cream as being “heavier” than milk because mentally we think about what the fat content can do to us, but it is actually lighter than milk, which is why Cream will rise to the top. Cream…
Delmonico’s Restaurant
Delmonico’s Restaurant was the first luxury restaurant in New York, and for almost 100 years defined “haute cuisine” in America.
Emmenthal Cheese
Emmenthal cheese is the famous Swiss cheese with the big holes in it. It melts well and has a nutty flavour.
Fondue
A fondue is a collective meal with a pot at the centre of the table. Pieces of food are either cooked in the pot, or dipped into a prepared sauce in the pot.
Francois Vatel
Francois Vatel is known as the great chef who killed himself on the morning of the 24th of April 1671 at Chantilly, France because a delivery of fish didn’t arrive.
Fricassée de Porc à la Genevoise
Normally, the phrase “à la Genevoise” implies a white dish with fish in it. Here, it just means Geneva style. The dish is based on pork, and comes out dark, from red wine and pork blood in it. It uses cubed pork (along with vegetables of your choice), all of which have been marinated for…
German Flours
In Germany, a wide variety of grain flours are sold and used. Unlike other Western countries, where anything other than a wheat flour is a “novelty” or “health” flour, rye and spelt flours are still used relatively commonly.
Girolle
A girolle is a special tool to help you turn your Tête de Moine cheese shavings into roses.
Grapeseed Oil
After grapes have been pressed for wine, they leave a residue call the “pomace”, which is the seeds, the skin and the stems. Sometimes this is used for making Grappa with; othertimes, it can be used for making oil with. The oil is pressed from the seeds, which constitute sometimes 30 to 40% of the…
Gruyère Cheese
Gruyère is a hard, pale yellow or ivory-coloured cheese with small holes made from cow’s milk. The cheese is semi-firm and pliable. The rind is hard and grainy, ranging in colour from dark golden to brown. Melts well.
Louis Fauchère
Louis Fauchère was a chef at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York in the mid-1800s. He later established the venerable Hotel Fauchère in Milford, PA.
Lugano Olives
Lugano Olives are actually Swiss olives, though they are usually classified as Italian (a) because of the name and (b) no one can imagine olive trees growing in Switzerland. The town of Lugano is on the shore of Lake Lugano (aka Lake Ceresio) in the Italian speaking Ticino part of Switzerland, which is south of…
Maggi Seasoning Sauce
Maggi is a thin, dark, concentrated seasoning sauce produced commercially and sold in bottles. The formulation can vary by country; the Swiss version is the original. The colour of the bottle cap will vary by country as well.
Marmite Pots
A marmite is a low, hefty, squat pot. It has only slightly sloped sides, with a lid and two short handles, one on each side. Marmites are used for braising, soups and stews.
Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner
Life and Times One of the earliest promoters of raw-food diets was the Swiss doctor Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner [1] (born 22 August 1867 in Aarau, Switzerland; died 24 January 1939.) Max’s father, Heinrich Bircher, had been a notary public in Aarau, Switzerland. His mother was Berta Krüsi. The family was relatively well-off until a financial…
Potato Pancakes
There are a zillion ways to make potato pancakes; even a zillion ways to make Latkes alone. No one culture has the monopoly, and don’t let them tell you otherwise. After all, no potato food is really all that traditional to any European culture in the grand scheme of things: potatoes didn’t come to Europe…