BaroqueW

First you need to be aware that fondue comes from Switzerland. Not the chocolate fondue either, but real proper cheese fondue. Yes, “fondue” is a French word. Do you know what language they speak in Switzerland? French! Learn something new every day.

That said, you will need a few things for your fondue.

• A Swiss earthenware fondue pot, preferably with red and white decorations with accompanying fondue forks
• Real Swiss cheese, not American cheese that’s labeled “Swiss” just because it has holes in it
• People speaking French with cute Swiss accents

Kidnapping tends to be frowned upon in today’s society, so cultivating friendships with Swiss people would probably be helpful. KTH campus is a good place to find them (well, it worked for me anyway). Then you can be lazy and hope that they provide the other vital ingredients, muhahahaha.

Baroquew and I managed to succeed in being invited to a fondue dinner hosted by Grégoire and Angela, who you may remember from my adventures in flying. While standing slightly out of the way watching wine be

poured onto the cheese in the fondue pot on the stove, like an alcoholic sacrifice to the cheese gods, I realized that I had no idea what fondue really was, except something involving dipping something into something. Very vague. But apparently it’s not just a bygone of the 60s and 70s and the age of key parties when people really shared everything.

Instead it comes from Swiss townspeople who ran out of fresh foods in the winter months, and needed to liven up their stale breads and dried out cheeses. Sounds tasty, right? Well if you’re going to be picky about it, who was the first person who looked at a cow and said “Hey, how about I squeeze the juice out of that and let it rot in a dark room for months before I eat it?” People make due with what they can, and sometimes they get really good at it. So wine, garlic, and other spices were added and together a community ate out of one pot to symbolically show community spirit.

Of course, we have new traditions now: such as how to punish the person who loses their bread in the cheese, or how to fight miniature battles over the last scrapings of cheese. Your new Swiss friends (and French ones as well, they can’t resist cheese and will show up immediately) will be happy to explain the details and go into fond reminisces of other fondue dinners. The tricky part is getting them to do it in English.

Also, one must remember never to react when visiting a student corridor and being given a large mixing bowl to make tea in. Much like the colonizers of the fondue frontier, students are geniuses when it comes to making do with what they have and doing it very well.

My thanks to Grégoire and Angela for inviting us for proper Swiss fondue. It was surprisingly delicious even to my untutored American palate. Bread and cheese has never tasted so good, or been so fun to eat.

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May 20th, 2007 | Tags: Cooking | Category: Articles in English, Blog | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL