World Cup Food Challenge: Switzerland - Beer Fondue

Switzerland.  Home of the Swiss Army Knife, Red Bull, Toblerone, tax havens, and armed neutrality.  Birthplace of the Red Cross and the cuckoo clock.  It is also the home of FIFA, so it's not really surprising that they qualified for Brazil 2014.

Switzerland are the last of my four countries for the World Cup Food Challenge, but Tonight's Menu is one that I have been greedily looking forward to.  Anybody who knows me will be able to confirm that I am a lover of Cheese.  Given the choice I will go for a cheese board over any dessert on a restaurant menu.  I'm a paid up member of Homage 2 Fromage, Leeds' wonderful cheese club.  For my birthday this year Z bought me a cheese making kit.  It should be of no surprise that I chose fondue to represent Switzerland.

The decision wasn't automatic though.  Fondue was on the back burner whilst I was looking for other dishes to cook, when I found the recipe for "The Best Swiss Cheese and Beer Fondue".  Cheese and beer? Now you're talking.  I've only had fondue a couple of times in the past and the most memorable time was memorable for all the wrong reasons.  Too much booze overpowered the cheese.  The idea of a beery version was too good to miss out on.

The recipe is specific in relation to the cheese that's required, but when it came to the beer, it just says beer.  Dark beer, light beer, hoppy beer, I really didn't know what they had in mind.  I contacted Beer Ritz via Twitter to see if they stocked any Swiss beer, but the answer was no.  I was at a loss and started googling Swiss beer styles to see if I could get an idea of the type of beer that I should use.  I had settled on using a Helles style light lager when I was contacted by John from 1936 Biere.

John had seen my conversation with Beer Ritz and, being the seller of a beer brewed in Switzerland, was quick to get in touch and tell me of his wares.  He pointed me in the direction of Lazy Lounge who stock 1936, both bottled and on draft.  I hot footed it to the pub, bought the last six bottles of Swiss beer in the region*, and stashed it in the cellar until it was needed.

Yesterday I sourced the cheese for my fondue.  A trip to George and Joseph in Chapel Allerton is always a pleasure.  Stephen (cheesemonger extraordinaire) had reserved me a block of Reserve Gruyere de Jura and suggested Ogleshield Raclette as a suitable replacement for Emmental.  The two grated blocks of cheese were slowly melted into the beer, nothing could have been easier.

The only thing left was to decide what to dunk into the cheesy goodness.  We went for the obligatory bread, radishes, carrot batons, gherkins, and pickled onions, all washed down with the rest of the 1936.  The only rules were no double dipping and no sabotaging anybody else's dunk by knocking their bread off their fork and into the fondue.

Switzerland are not yet out of the world cup. A win against Honduras could well be enough to see them through to the knockout stages.  I'm not sure I'll be able to top fondue as a Swiss meal but I'll have to give it a go.  I will be going out to buy a fondue set though.  The orange beauty in the photo belongs to Nick, from Homage 2 Fromage, who was wonderful enough to let me borrow it for tonight.

*I also had a cheeky half pint of it while I was there.  Well it would have been rude not to.

Steak and Guinness Pie Revisited

Just a quick post tonight as we're eating the remains of the pie that we cooked for St. Patrick's Day.  We're even having it with similar accompaniments only served slightly differently.  The pie was warmed in the oven, wrapped up in tinfoil to make sure that the pastry didn't burn.  Tonight's potato and cabbage were boiled and steamed respectively and the whole lot was served with onion gravy.

As leftovers go, the pie was great.  The filling had improved the way that stew or curry made a couple of days ago does and the pastry hadn't gone soggy!  The down side was I'd completely run out of Guinness.  Still, you can't have everything.

Steak and Guinness Pie

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I know I'm not Irish but when has that ever stopped anybody from enjoying a drop of the black stuff on 17th March?  It has also given us the chance to make a pie.  We are pastry mad in this house.  Any excuse for a pie, flan, tart, pasty or vol-au-vent is grabbed with gusto.  This normally turns into a lunch dish or a dessert so a full pie for an evening meal is great news.

Such is our passion for pies we have discussed at length what constitutes the perfect pie.  This conversation normally takes place in a pub after a less than perfect example has been served.  A stew with a pastry lid is not a pie.  A pastry base with no lid is not a pie.  You need a bottom, top and sides before you can claim to have made a pie*.  This is when we start getting serious.  My ideal pie has a short crust base and a puff pastry lid.  The base is blind baked so that it doesn't go soggy, the filling is piled in and lovely flaky lid is added.

Our filling of braising steak, onions, celery, mushrooms and Guinness, was pre-cooked.  I know a true pie should all be cooked together but it's my kitchen and therefore my rules.  Once cooked, we served our pie with colcannon for that added nod to St. Patrick.

*There are of course exceptions that prove the rule, these include a fish pie, shepherd's pie or cottage pie.  For some reason these mashed potato topped cuddles in a dish, pass the pie test by being furthest from the definition.

Lemon Sole in Beer with Samphire

This afternoon I had the dubious honour of attending a networking event for work.  I say dubious because I often find these events to be full of the kind of business people that I would normally avoid and certainly not do business with. The professional "networker" is a self assure business card pushing be-suited egotist that wouldn't look out of place on The Apprentice*.  Today's event wasn't like that at all.

Firstly, the event was aimed at community organisations.  I was probably the only person in the room wearing a tie but that's just how I roll.  Secondly, this wasn't the kind of networking where you press business cards into as many hands as possible.  This was an exchange of information about groups doing good and interesting things around Leeds.  The final positive from the meeting was its venue, the new meeting room in Leeds Kirkgate Market.

I deliberately set off from work a little early so that I could get some shopping in before the meeting started.  I was in a fishy mood so I wandered up and down fish row looking for inspiration.  I almost bought some razor clams but then I saw a huge pile of samphire and I changed tack.

I'd never eaten samphire before so I wanted it to be the star of the show.  My original thought for the razor clams was to fry them with chorizo but I thought this would be a bit overpowering for the samphire.  I decided on lemon sole as is has a lovely delicate flavour.  I poached the fish in beer** and made a light butter sauce with the reduced liquid.  I was stunned by just how salty the samphire was.  I cooked it in boiling water for just 3 minutes and I'll be doing so again.

*I do not watch The Apprentice but as we are force-fed the "news" from the show, as if it was important to my day to day life, I have managed to form a very strong opinion on both the show and the people on it.
**I used Budvar, but any pilsner or light trappist beer would make a great sauce.