Seasons by the Sea: What a Friend in Cheese
This is the time of year when warm, comforting foods are very appealing. What can be even more appealing are melty-cheesy dishes like Welsh rabbit, Kentucky hot brown, fondues, and raclette. The fun of fondue and raclette is that they are interactive meals. You simply set out the ingredients and let everyone do their own thing. While some would consider fondue a meal, I prefer to have it as a fun first course, followed by a light, yet heartily packed vegetable soup like ribollita.
Perhaps the simplest dish is Welsh rabbit (not rarebit), which requires no special equipment. It is simply toasted bread with a cheese sauce poured over it. The sauce is usually a bechamel to which cheddar cheese has been added. Other possible additions are beer or ale, mustard, paprika, and/or cayenne.
The Kentucky hot brown, invented at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Ky., in 1926 as a late-night meal, consists of toast on the bottom, slices of turkey, a hot cheesy mornay sauce, then slices of crisped bacon. You could also add sliced tomatoes but why add a vegetable or color at this point? You’re in the South! If you stowed some leftover Thanksgiving turkey in your freezer, pull some out and try this delicious dish.
Fondues and raclette are the most fun of all but do require equipment. You can melt cheese in almost any fireproof vessel, but to maintain the proper texture and temperature throughout the meal, you need a fondue pot or raclette coupelle so you can have a continuous low flame keeping it warm.
If my mother, Honoria, had a Proustian food memory it was most certainly raclette. I remember her talking about it often — how delicious and nutty the melted cheese was, being scraped off the wheel onto a plate with boiled potatoes and cornichons. I wish we could have shared this dish with her as I have just recently discovered it. Raclette is the name of the cheese used and the recipe itself, after the verb racler, “to scrape.” Most stories about its history describe farmers or herdsmen setting up camp for the night high up in the Alps. They would lay a cheese wheel near the fire, and as it softened, scrape it off onto bread. The traditional accompaniments are cornichons (little French pickles), pickled onions, and small boiled potatoes. You can also dip bits of good ham into it. In my research for this dish I spoke with Michael Cavaniola of Cavaniola’s Gourmet Cheese Shop in Sag Harbor. It sells everything you need for either fondue or raclette. He asked if I was going to roast the potatoes in duck fat. So of course I had to. . . . This elevated the raclette to new levels of flavor and naughtiness. And since I didn’t have any pickled onions, he suggested cipollini onions, which turned out to be far better than plain old cocktail onions from a jar. They were sweeter and less vinegary.
Fondue has so many variations and dipping possibilities. As far as I’m concerned, anything that tastes good with cheese will taste good dipped into fondue.
There are also some etiquette rules for fondue. Rather than transfer your cheesy bread cube or apple slice directly from the pot into your mouth, you should transfer it from the pot to your plate, then eat it. No double dipping. If a gentleman’s bread cube falls into the pot, he must buy a round of drinks for all. Let’s remember, this dish is popular at ski resorts, where much jollity and drinking apres-ski are also considered sports. If a lady drops her bread cube into the bubbling cheese lava, she must kiss her nearest dining companions. The skewers that come with a fondue set are color-coded so each person can identify his or her own.
For my first fondue experiment I wanted to remain traditional and went with Mr. Cavaniola’s recommendation of a third Gruyere, a third Emmental, and a third Appenzeler. For additional binding and blending you can add a bit of cornstarch or flour. I prefer cornstarch as it thickens quickly and flour takes longer to cook.
Begin by rubbing a cut clove of garlic in your fondue pot or cooking vessel on the stove. Boil some dry white wine (preferably from the same region as the cheeses), then add cheese a bit at a time, stirring continuously and melting each addition before adding more. You can toss the cornstarch with the grated cheese to save a step, or add it as it cooks. A bit of lemon juice also enhances the emulsification of the fondue. A lot of traditional recipes also call for kirsch, a cherry liqueur, but I didn’t bother.
From here you transfer the fondue to the tabletop, with an appropriate heat source underneath, whether candles or Sterno or whatever came with your fondue set. Bread cubes are all you need, but cubes of ham, slices of apple, blanched broccoli florets or cauliflower, steamed potatoes, other root vegetables, and anything else you think would taste good are all appropriate.
There are some dangers of the cheese mixture separating, which is why certain cheeses are considered best for this dish. While I did see numerous recipes that used cheddars and goat cheese, Mr. Cavaniola warned against these as the altitude at which the cows are raised, the milk produced, and cheeses made, makes a difference. In other words, altitude matters.
If your fondue does separate, it can be revived by the addition of more wine (or other liquid), can be whipped into submission with an immersion blender (not sure about this), and one person suggested adding an egg yolk. I had no trouble with my maiden voyage and also had success reheating it the next day without problems. If your fondue party is so successful that you are left with no more than a browning cheesy crust at the bottom of the pot, turn the heat down and let it crisp up. This is known as le religieuse or “the nun.” It is delicious.
In Italy, a similar dish is referred to as fonduta, usually made with fontina cheese. A friend who grew up there and remembers the dish well says it was referred to as il pasto pericoloso, “the dangerous meal.” No doubt this refers to sharing an interactive meal with small children, an open flame, and sharp skewers on the kitchen table, not the fat content of the meal!
For self preservation, I enjoyed some outdoor hiking both before and after indulging in fondue and raclette, my pathetic replication of a day spent skiing in the Alps, and justification for such rich dishes.
If you have an old fondue pot gathering dust somewhere (I’ll bet your parent have one!), dig it out and start playing with fondue. Or just get a little contraption to melt raclette. Even a cast iron skillet will do.
It was fun researching and discovering these ancient dishes. I only wish I could have enjoyed them with my mother, whose memories and reminiscences inspired this cheesy journey.
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