CARDOONS AU GRATIN

Background:

This is a dish unique to Geneva. Cardoons are a kind of thistles and they are quite hard to prepare but, fortunately, my aunt sent me some preserved ones directly from Geneva. My dad had them on special occasions.

The recipe:

Serves:                 4

Ingredients:

1kg cardoons, trimmed
20g butter
200ml cream
100g gruyere cheese, grated
100ml white wine vinegar
Salt, pepper, nutmeg

BLANC
100g Kidney fat
30g flour
Juice of ½ a lemon
3L water

Method:

Clean and chop the cardoons, soak for a few minutes in vinegar water and strain. Rub them with coarse salt in a cloth and wash again. Cook in a “blanc” with kidney fat for 20-30 mins. Keep the cardoons firm. Drain and place in a buttered gratin dish. Cover with the cream seasoned with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Sprinkle the grated gruyere on top and brown in the oven.

My experience making it:

I made this differently to the way the recipe told me because in the recipe, you use fresh cardoons but I used preserved ones. This meant that my job was much easier that it ought to have been. All I had to do was lay them on a buttered dish, pour cream on them, grate gruyere and put it in the oven.

Difficulty rating: 1/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        Very unusual but nice at the same time. I never thought you could eat thistles before.

Rating: 4/5

Mum:    Kidney fat?  Glad Melia didn’t use that!  I’ve never had cardoons before though I’ve heard about them.  A kind of thistle that you need bravery to harvest and peel.  They tasted to me a little like artichoke hearts and the texture was quite unusual.  Firm but not at all crunchy.  Smooth yet fibrous and surprisingly juicy.   Married with the cream and gruyère it was delicious.  I’m not surprised this is a delicacy.

Rating:   4.5/5

Dad:     This is really something special that I never expected to get in Australia. We did get this dish occasionally in Geneva on special days such as Christmas or Easter. My sister managed to surprise Melia by sending her some preserved cardoons from Geneva and it was a treat.

Rating:  5 /5

Lucy  :    A very interesting vegetable, but with a surprising amount of flavour.

Rating:   4/5

ECUS AU CHOCOLAT

Background:

I’m not sure if these are typically Swiss but my Dad’s family in Geneva always had these at Christmas time. The recipe comes from a Swiss recipe book.

The recipe:

Serves:                 4

Ingredients:

200g dark chocolate
4 egg yolks
160g castor sugar
½ packet vanilla sugar
70g butter
140g chopped walnuts.

Method:

Melt the chocolate. Melt the sugar with the egg yolks in a small saucepan. Once the sugar has nicely melted and have obtained a yellowish cream, add the butter cut into little pieces.

Pour it onto the chocolate and mix well. Add the nuts.

Lay out 2 sheets of aluminium foil. Sprinkle some icing sugar over them. Spoon half the mixture onto each and roll to make 2 sausages. Place in refrigerator for a few hours. Cut into rounds of 5mm thickness.

My experience making it:

You have to stir the egg and sugar in the saucepan very well for it not to turn into scrambled eggs. Apart from that it’s easy to make and it doesn’t take very much time either.

Difficulty rating: 2/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        Very nice but I think the sugar could have been melted a bit better. They were still a bit grainy.

Rating: 4/5

Mum:    A favourite Christmas treat for all of us.  They look really decorative with the cross-sections of walnut embedded in rich dark chocolate.  However, this batch is a little grainy in texture.

Rating:  3.5 /5

Dad:     This is also a family tradition in Geneva even though I don’t know if it is a Swiss recipe. They always taste and look good.

Rating:   4.5/5

Lucy  :    These are another of my favourite Christmas biscuits, and we make them almost every year.

Rating:   4/5

CINNAMON STARS

Background:

Usually our aunt sends us these biscuits for Christmas but this year we decided to make them ourselves. These are traditional in the Swiss Christmas, at least in my dad’s family.

The recipe:

Serves:                 4

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
300g icing sugar
1 ½ tbsp. cinnamon
1 tbsp. kirsch or ½ tbsp. lemon juice
350g ground almonds

Method:

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently beat in the icing sugar.

Reserve 1 dl of this mixture for icing.

Add the cinnamon, kirsch or lemon juice and almonds to the egg whites and sugar. Knead the dough lightly.

Roll the dough out to ½ a cm. on a bench sprinkled with icing sugar.  Cut out star shapes, ice them and dry these out overnight.

Bake the next day for 3-5 minutes at a preheated oven at 250*C.

My experience making it:

The dough was very fiddle to handle as it was quite sticky. Icing them was also quite tedious.

Difficulty rating: 3/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        They tasted very good although the longer you leave them (the more they dry out) the better they get.

Rating: 3.5/5

Mum:    Yum.  We do these each year but I don’t think I’ve ever had such good ones.  These were light and delicate in flavour and texture.  Ever so slightly soft which I think gives them more of a marzipan flavour from the ground almonds than usual.  I think they’re rolled thinner than usual as well.  There’s a flakiness where the icing meets the biscuit which I really like.  Excellent.

Rating:   5/5

Dad:     This is a traditional biscuit in my family and they were very well made.

Rating:   4.5/5

Lucy  :    These are some of my favourite Christmas biscuits, and it’s hard to imagine Christmas without them.  They were done well, although they were a bit too soft this time.

Rating:   4/5

CHALET SOUP

CHALET SOUP

Background: This recipe is from the Canton of Fribourg. It’s quite a rustic soup that you would get in the mountains that could be modified easily depending in which season you make it and what vegetables are around. My dad often had soups as a kid.

The recipe:

Serves:                 4

Ingredients:

400g potatoes
60g butter
60g spinach
60g dried butter beans (dried weight), soaked
400g turnips, onions, carrots, leeks
60g broken macaroni
2L beef stock
500ml milk
200ml cream
30g chives
100g gruyere cheese

Method:
Melt the butter and sweat all the vegetables without colouring. Add the beef stock, butter beans and seasoning. Simmer for 50 mins. Add the broken macaroni and milk and boil for about 10 mins. When cooked, add the cream and grated cheese.
Adjust the seasoning.
Before serving, sprinkle with chopped chives.

My experience making it:

We had a lot of vegetables in the garden that needed using like silver beet and cabbage so we added them as well. It was very simple but you have to remember to start cooking it early as you have to simmer it for 50 mins.

Difficulty rating: 2/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        This was very good. An excellent winter meal.
Rating: 4.75/5

Mum:    I’ve made this soup several times before but I can’t remember it being so good.  This really hit the spot.  It’s a meal in itself, tasty and wholesome.
Rating:   4.5/5

Lucy:      Delicious soup, and great on a cold winter’s day. The recipe is quite adaptable to whatever vegetables you want to include.
Rating:   4.5/5

HERB SOUP

Background: This recipe comes from Basle, the north of Switzerland. I chose it because my dad often had soups when he was a kid in Geneva as his parents came from the German part of Switzerland.

Serves:                 4

Ingredients:

50g butter
150g fresh spinach, shredded
30g chervil, chopped roughly
10 fresh mint leaves
100g onion
1 sprig marjoram
30g flour
1.2 L beef stock
40g croutons (fried in butter)
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
5 egg yolks
Parsley, chopped

Method:
Sweat the spinach, chervil, mint, onions and marjoram in the butter without colouring
Mix in the flour and remove from heat to cool. Mix in the stock. Season and cook for 15 mins.
When serving, use very hot soup bowls. Put a few croutons in each, pour in the soup and place an egg yolk in each bowl without stirring. Garnish with chopped parsley.

My experience making it:

Preparing the herbs and spinach got a bit tedious but it was quite simple. I also used silver beet instead of the spinach.

Difficulty rating: 2.5/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        It wasn’t bad but nor was it the most inspiring meal I’ve ever eaten.
Rating: 2.5/5

Lucy :     A nice, refreshing soup, but nothing special.
Rating:   3/5

CHERRY FRITTERS

Background: This recipe comes from St Gallen which is eastern Switzerland, where you find ‘bigarreau’ cherries. I chose this recipe because it was cherry season in Australia even though it is not a traditional dish in our family.

Serves:                 4-5

Ingredients:

5 eggs
150g flour
Pinch of salt
50ml oil
100ml milk
Egg whites stiffly beaten
300g cherries on the stalk
100g sugar flavoured with cinnamon
Tasteless oil for frying

Method:
Make a thick batter with the eggs, flour, salt, oil and milk. Leave it to rest for 40 mins.
Wash and dry the cherries carefully. Holding the cherries by their stalks, dip them in the batter and deep fry at 190*C until golden brown. Drain the cherries on kitchen paper then roll them in sugar and cinnamon.
Serve hot with warm custard flavoured with kirsch.

My experience making it:

Very easy to make but it’s much easier to do with cherries on the stalk. Some of the stalks came off my cherries but I tried to do them anyway. First of all, it makes your hands dirty. Secondly, it’s hard to cover it all with your hands so the batter splits in the oil.

Although the recipe said to serve with kirsch flavoured custard, I served mine with double cream flavoured with kirsch and icing sugar.

Difficulty rating: /5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        Delicious. Not the healthiest way to eat fruit but it was very decadent.
Rating: 4.5/5

Mum:  These were really yummy.  Well executed, looked great with the dusting of sugar, and the burst of cherry flavour inside the batter was really gorgeous.
Rating:   4.5/5

Dad:     I never had cherries that way but it work really well. We even repeated the experience the following day with apricot and it was a discovery.
Rating:  4.5 /5

Lucy : I’d never thought of doing fruit like this, but it was delicious!
Rating:   4/5

Tourte au kirsch de Zoug

Background: This is a traditional recipe from the canton of Zoug, where my dad’s mother originated from. My Dad used to eat this when he was a little boy but he cannot remember his mother actually making it as it is a tricky recipe that takes time to make.

The recipe:

Serves:                 4             

Biscuit mixture:
3 eggs
90g sugar
1tsp vanilla sugar
90g plain flour
Mix eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar in a thin bowl over a bain-marie and beat with a whip or electric mixer for 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and continue to beat until a thick mousse forms. Let the mixture cool down.
Sift and fold in half the flour into the cooled mixture, then do the same with the rest of the flour.  Pour into a 24cm diametre cake tin lined with paper. Bake for 30 mins at 180oC in the lower part of the oven. Let the biscuit rest overnight.

Meringue bases:
3 egg whites
a pinch of salt
80g sugar
75g ground almonds or hazelnuts
Beat egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form. Add half the sugar, continuing to beat until glossy and smooth. Then add the rest of the sugar without beating. Fold in the ground nuts.
Line two 24cm diametre trays with paper and pour half the mixture into each tray.
Bake at 120oC for 60min.

Butter cream:
250g butter, softened
200g icing sugar
2 egg yolks
3 tbsp kirsch
4 tbsp beetroot juice (to colour)
Cream the butter and sugar, then add the rest of the ingredients, forming a smooth paste. Refrigerate for a moment.

Kirsch syrup:
100mL water
2-4 tbsp sugar
150-200mL kirsch
Bring the sugar and water to the boil, cool, then add the kirsch.

Construction of the tourte

Put a meringue base on the serving dish, cover with one third of the butter cream. Soak the biscuit in the syrup, then put on top of the meringue and cover with another third of the cream. Put the second meringue base on top of that and cover the entire cake with the remaining butter cream.

Decoration (optional): cover with roasted flaked almonds.

My experience making it:

The recipe took quite a while to make. I also found that the beetroot I used didn’t let off enough colour so I had to crush up a bit of the actual beetroot and mix it in to make it pink. (I accidentally put in a bit too much so it was VERY pink.)

When assembling the cake, I found that it was very hard to get the syrup to soak into the biscuit. I therefore think it might be easier to actually place the biscuit into the syrup instead of placing the syrup on top of the biscuit.

Difficulty rating: 4/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        Very delicious. (It hurt my eyes to eat it though because it was so pink!)
Rating: 4/5

Mum:    Wow!! It’s pink!  The beetroot really worked well.  And a nicer colour somehow than artificial food dye I think.  The cake was really yummy though a bit sweet, so can’t have too much of it.  The kirsch was essential I think to add a bite to counteract the sweetness.
Rating:   4/5

Dad:     I like this tart and it is really a treat to have someone making it. I never had the patience to try.
Rating:  4 /5

Lucy  :    A bit too pink (next time we’ll have to add less beetroot), and almost sickly sweet.  But it still had a great flavour.
Rating:   3.5/5

SPATZLI or KNOPFLI

Background: This is also quite a typically Swiss recipe, and like gnocchi, they’re quite rustic. The way these spatzli are done, they should probably be called “knopfli”. The difference is that spatzli are quite long and thin but knopfli are just little balls. We never really made these at home because they were always so fiddly, but my dad had them quite often in Geneva as you could find them in packets like pasta. For my birthday my auntie gave me a special spatzli maker, so I had to try it.

The recipe:

Serves:                 4

Ingredients:

250g flour
5 eggs
1,5 dl milk
Butter, oil
Salt, pepper, nutmeg

Method:

Combine and mix the flour and eggs thoroughly. Add the milk and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Mix well.
Boil a large pot of water. Using a knopfli maker (a special grater with large holes about 1cm), let the mixture fall through in little balls. Do this small quantities at a time.
When the little balls float to the top, remove them from the water with a spoon with holes and place them in a bowl of cold water.
Once they have all been done, remove the cold water, let them drain, and dribble a bit of oil over them so that they don’t stick together.
Fry them in a saucepan with some butter until golden.

My experience making it:

Quite simple although I found that the batter was a bit too thin. It made vermicelli instead of spatzli, so I had to add in a bit more flour.

We grated parmesan on top (although gruyere would be better).

Difficulty rating: 2/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        A little bit bland if you don’t have them with cheese, but otherwise, very yummy.
Rating: 4.5/5

Mum:    We’ve had spatzli before but always made by hand.  Done by hand they are much bigger.  These were very little and almost reminded me more of pasta.  Caramelised onion on top added flavour, as did the grated cheese.  I could taste the hint of nutmeg in the mixture too.
Rating: 4/5

Dad:     First spatzli in a long time and I didn’t realise that I missed them. Melia will have to make them again soon.
Rating:   4.5/5

Lucy : It was fun to use the spätzli maker and much easier than making them by hand with 2 spoons. A great traditional Swiss dish, and you can make several different types of sauce to go with them (cherry sauce, apple puree…)
Rating: 4/5

Lapin aux deux moutardes (Rabbit with 2 mustards)

Background:       I’m not sure where in Switzerland this recipe comes from but I know my Dad had it as a kid. This recipe came from the recipes my auntie gave me. I’d never had rabbit before so I thought it might be a good experience.

Serves:                                 4

Ingredients:

1 rabbit
2 tbsp flour
Salt
Pepper
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. butter
125g bacon fat
4 shallots thinly sliced
Bouquet garni
1 cup white wine
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp. Dijon mustard (hot)
1 tsp. hot English mustard
200ml cream
 

Method:

Cut the rabbit into 6 pieces, roll in flour and season. Fry in oil and butter until golden. Add bacon fat, bouquet garni, shallots, wine and stock. Cook for 1 to 1,5 hours. Remove the pieces of rabbit, keep warm. Add the 2 mustards and the cream to the sauce. Mix well.

 

My experience making it:

Luckily I didn’t have to cut the rabbit. The butcher had already done it for me. I don’t think I would have known how to do it if he hadn’t. This recipe was also simple although shallots really make your eyes water! However, there was one thing I discovered while I made this. Mustard in Switzerland must be a lot hotter than that in Australia. I had to add double quantities to be able to taste it, and even then it wasn’t very strong. I also didn’t have any bacon fat so I used more butter instead.
All the ingredients are easy to find.

Difficulty rating: 2,5/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        It was very interesting trying rabbit. It’s not my favourite meat because it had so many little bones, but it had a nice flavour. I have nothing to compare it with so I don’t know what it’s meant to taste like. The sauce was really nice.
Rating: 3.5/5

Mum:    I’ve only had rabbit once before.  It was many years ago in an expensive restaurant in Switzerland and I don’t remember being totally rapt.  When Melia asked if she could try cooking rabbit for her project I felt a bit ambivalent.  However, living in Australia, we should be eating rabbit in preference to other meats.  It is surely better to eat the rabbits we destroy as pests than to bury them.  The Eco-Meats butcher sold us wild rabbit and neatly cut it into 6 pieces for us.  It smelt and looked delicious while it was cooking.  Presentation was good, surrounded in a ring of noodles.   But I wasn’t convinced by the eating of it.  The rabbit was high percentage bone (or maybe that was just the piece I was given – others seemed to have less bone on theirs).  The taste was unfamiliar.  No fat or gristle.  The bit that I had was darkish meat and gamey and very firm despite its long cooking time.  A slice I was given by someone else was much lighter and more like chicken.  One section even tasted a little like it had bacon in it, though we had none in the house.  So – you need to work hard to extract the meat from the bone, but the meat was not unpleasant.  Unfortunately I wasn’t all that fond of the sauce.  The mustard taste was good but the whole pot of cream that went into it was too rich for me!
Rating:   3/5

Dad: First time I had rabbit in Australia and I found it tougher than the one I remember from Geneva (but it was wild!). Good taste though and I like the mustard sauce although it could have been even a bit stronger.  The type of pasta used was also not the best (the wholemeal variety was too hard), small noodles (like in Geneva) would have been better.
Rating:   3.5/5

LEBKUCHEN – Recipe from Lucerne

Background:       This recipe literally means gingerbread. This is usually eaten on the 6^th of December during the “St Nicholas” festival. I made this as afternoon tea for my Dad’s birthday.
Serves:                 10-12

Preparation time: 1hr 30 min

 Ingredients:

200mL fresh cream
140g pear molasses (treacle)
150g sugar
20g candied lemon and orange peel, diced
a pinch each of ground aniseed, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove
pinch of salt
20g baking powder
500g wholemeal (or white) flour
200mL warm milk

Method:

Whip the cream and mix with 80g molasses, spices and salt.
Add the baking powder, flour, warm milk and diced peel, mixing thoroughly until smooth.
Pour the mixture into a greased and lined sponge ring and bake for 45-50 minutes at 180^oC.
When baked, brush the top with the remaining pear molasses to glaze.
Recommended drink: tea or coffee

My experience making it:

I loved licking out the bowls. It was not that hard, although I couldn’t get the mixture smooth. (This didn’t matter in the end result). I added more than just a pinch of each spice and I also added a bit more milk.

I made this for afternoon tea as it was my Dad’s birthday.

Difficulty rating: 1/5

Taste test/ my guinea pigs:

Me:        Not enough spices despite me putting in more than what it asked for. It was delicious apart from that.
Rating: 3.5/5

Mum:    I have to agree with Melia.  The spices seemed a little light on.  However, the treacle coating on the outside was a really nice touch.  It gave it a dark layer of flavour and sweetness on the outside and a contrasting lighter colour on the inside.  I think the flavour also improved with age as it seemed more strongly flavoured the next day.
Rating:   3/5

Dad:     This reminded me of the Christmas periods in Geneva where we often had such afternoon snacks.
Rating:   4/5

Lucy:      Have to try this recipe again adding more spice… But still yummy.
Rating:   3.5/5