If you’re anywhere in Switzerland at the moment, you can’t have failed to meet those wondrous, fragile, deep-fried, sugar-dusted little pieces of wickedness known variously as Fasnachtskiechle or merveilles de carnaval. Here’s a cheeky little dessert idea to take you into (and beyond) carnival – maybe even into a trancelike state:

• Take a Fasnachtskiechle (or several miniature Herbstkiechles, about 4 cm-diameter, pictured above) and place on a serving plate or board
• Arrange balls of ice cream over the Fasnachtskiechle to completely cover (or sandwich a ball of ice cream between 2 mini Fasnachtskiechles)
• Top with a second Fasnachtskiechle, press down very gently (they’re super-fragile)and put in the freezer till serving time
• Make a chocolate sauce by dissolving 125g best quality dark chocolate in 250ml (1 cup) water with 50g sugar in a saucepan over gentle heat
• When chocolate and sugar have dissolved, raise heat and boil for about 10 minutes or until sauce is glossy and somewhat thickened
• To serve, cut the large Fasnachtskiechle-Torte in serving pieces with a very sharp, serrated knife (serve mini-Kiechles whole) and drizzle choccy sauce over

To my great delight, Rachael Sills of KäseSwiss was good enough to provide a fabulous cheese platter, with samples of the kind of wonderful Swiss farmhouse cheeses she exports to the UK. Never heard of KäseSwiss? Allow me to introduce you!

Rachael hails originally from New Zealand, and like many a Kiwi, sooner or later she made her way to London. With a hotel management background, she looked around for jobs in the hospitality business, but all along she had a secret yen to make cheese. Instead of entering the hotel world, she went to work for the famous cheese shop Neal’s Yard Dairy where she learnt not only to sell but also to make cheese, and soon progressed to being one of the Neal’s Yard buyers.

In 2004 she came to Switzerland and dived with relish into the wonderful world of Swiss cheese. Soon KäseSwiss was born, which specialises in selected farmhouse cheeses from all around the country. Nowadays she divides her time between Zürich and London, where KäseSwiss has a stand in the famous Borough Market, a magnet for serious foodies whether they live in London or are just visiting.

Rachael’s sample cheeses included a fragrant Heublumenkäse, a semi-hard beauty from the Toggenburg made by Thomas Stadelmann; a beautifully matured hunk of l’Etivaz, which tops my list of favourite alpine cheeses, made only in the summer months in the Alps of canton Vaud; some gorgeous Gruyère – which needs no introduction – and a truly wonderful, spruce-bound Forsterkäse, which (rather like its distant cousin Vacherin Mont d’Or) has a tendency to run about in a deliciously unruly fashion, so you need to serve it with a spoon.

You can read about many of these cheeses, where and how they’re made and what they taste like in my book Cheese: Slices of Swiss Culture (which recently won an award as best book from German-speaking Switzerland in the cheese category in the Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards). And you can find them at Borough Market or direct from Rachael via the KäseSwiss website.

Now we all lerv cheese and have iron stomachs, but even our seasoned palates were partially defeated. The soft ones, especially the paprika-rolled one, were fabulous – sweet and spicy, not unduly goaty and brilliant with oatcakes; the harder, more aged ones just about blew us away (and anyone who subsequently came into range)

Feeling a bit disloyal – both to the cheeses and to my son – I squirrelled the remains away in the fridge. Every now and then I’d open the door, nervously lever the lid off their Tupperware box and survey them, disconsolately (unlike most of the world, it seems, I just hate to throw anything away). They gazed back at me, unblinking.  Okay, I muttered, I’ll do something about you soon. Finally I dredged up the memory of something the French call fromage fort, or strong cheese. It’s a time-honoured way to deal with bits and pieces of cheese that are no longer good enough for the cheese board but which still have a life, sort of. (My near neighbour, Bernard Antony, famed cheesemonger in Vieux-Ferrette, does a fabulous one based, as I recall, on blue cheese with Gewurztraminer). The fromage fort treatment for my goat’s cheeses would be just the ticket!

Out of their box they came, off came the rinds, and into the food processor they went, hotly pursued by some soft fresh goat’s cheese (those little Chèvretines that are wonderful put up in oil), some soft butter, a little white wine, some caraway seeds (to aid digestion) and a careless scattering of chopped parsley. Voilà!

It was a triumph. The ferocious goaty flavours were tamed by the butter, wine and fresh cheese and the caraway seeds soothed the digestion. We spread a little on oatcakes. Later we made bruschette and piled cherry tomatoes and rocket on top. Finally I boiled up some toothsome whirls of fusilli con buco brought by my friend and fellow food writer Carla Capalbo on her last fleeting visit, and stirred in a bit of fromage fort. Mmmmmmmmm.

There’s still the tiniest bit left but I may have to give up on that. Or freeze it.

FROMAGE FORT

• about 250g leftover cheese, preferably a mixture of soft and hard
• 100ml dry white wine
• 25g softened butter
• 5 small, soft fresh goat’s cheeses (Chèvretines)
• a pinch of caraway seeds
• a scattering of chopped parsley

Put all ingredients into a food processor and process to a smooth paste. Serve with oatcakes, crackers, toast or pasta.

freshly cooked lobsters, photographed at the Ecole Hoteliere, Lausanne

From time to time, Thierry Meyer of oeonalsace.com (and formerly Alsace correspondent for the Bettane & Dessauve Grand Guide des Vins de France), together with chef Jean-Philippe Guggenbuhl of La Taverne Alsacienne near Colmar cook up an appealing plan. Keeping a collective ear close to the ground – and an eye on the market – they wait for the moment when a particularly delicious item (skrei, morels, asparagus, venison, wild salmon…) is offered at a favourable rate. Then they pounce. Soon (and at shortish notice) the word goes out about a lunch or dinner at the restaurant which will privilege that particular food.

Last Saturday it was the turn of lobster. The price was right (they’re always cheaper after the Christmas rush), the date selected and 12 of us assembled, each bidden to bring a suitable bottle of wine to accompany the lobster feast.

Jean-Philippe’s menu, fairly priced at €65 all-in, opened with a salad of mixed winter leaves with lobster, diced mango and slivered black truffles. The first flight of wines featured a Pinot Gris GC Kirchberg from Louis Sipp in Ribeauvillé, a PG GC Brand 02 from Josmeyer in Wintzenheim and a Riesling GC Kitterlé 01 from Schlumberger in Guebwiller. All wines coped well with the (considerable) challenge of the salad – think sharp notes from the dressing, a touch of sweetness from the lobster and mango and slight bitterness from the salad leaves, especially rocket and dandelion. On balance the two Pinot Gris (both elegant, toasty/smoky and with a perfectly dry finish) came out best, while the minerally/petrolly notes of the Riesling (typical of some Alsace Rieslings of a certain age and from certain terroirs) offended some palates.

Next came toothsome raviolis filled with diced lobster suspended in a sternly reduced, lightly creamed bisque-like sauce. The intensity of aromas and flavours almost overwhelmed the elegant, minerally Riesling GC Florimont 02 from Claude Weinzorn’s Domaine de l’Oriel, while a massive (15%), mushroomy, lightly wooded Pacherenc du Vic Bihl Chateau Montus and a superbly iodé Chablis GC Grenouille 83 from Bouchard both coped admirably, the latter, in particular, picking up the iodine notes of the shellfish in pleasing harmony.

Next the main course, the tail of the lobster with a meat jus, which was partnered by quite probably the wickedest pommes de terre that have ever passed my lips (equal quantities of purée and cream, ‘enriched’ with butter and put through their paces in the Pacojet to give them an illusion of lightness, explained chef Jean-Philippe without batting an eyelid). With this came the third flight of wines: a golden, gently bubbly  Veuve Clicquot 95 which smelled of buttered toast and tasted gorgeous, a Vouvray demi-sec 93 from Huet with hints of hyacinths and honey, wonderful balance of sweetness with a dry finish, and a Pinot Gris Clos Windsbuhl 99 from legendary wine makers Zind-Humbrecht – astonishing richness and complexity.

Pudding was a round of puff pastry with a swirl of finely sliced apple topped with a silken vanilla ice cream and a smudge of mango puree. This elicited another Pinot Gris (my favourite food wine, I was in clover) and a brace of Gewurztraminers. The Pinot Gris, Claude Weinzorn’s GC Sommerberg Les Terrasses 08, almost had me jumping into the car and heading up the hill to nearby Niedermorschwihr in search of one of the few remaining bottles. The first Gewurz, a GC Osterberg VT 05 from Louis Sipp, was classic, understated, with a fabulous backbone of acidity – the antithesis of those OTT Gewurzes that put people off this aromatic, spicy grape. The second was a prized drop of Sélection de Grains Nobles, also 05, from Domaine Schoenheitz, described modestly by the wine maker (who was present, along with all those responsible for this last flight) as a wine that practically made itself – terrific botrytis that year and near perfect conditions for naturally sweet wines.

A great way to spend a rainy Saturday lunch time. Now I’m just waiting for news of the next feast.

from A Taste of Switzerland by Sue Style, photo copyyright John Miller

To many non-Swiss, fondue is a bit of a Seventies cliché. In Switzerland, it’s just an uncomplicated, convivial, warming winter dish – just right for this week when the temperature has been struggling to get its head above zero. There are no hard and fast rules about which cheese to use – at least none that are universally agreed upon in this most directly democratic of countries. It all depends on the region – in canton Fribourg the classic mixture (moitié-moitié, half-and-half) is Gruyère and Emmentaler; in the Jura you might get a fondue featuring some locally made semi-hard cheeses like Mont Soleil or Erguel and Tête de Moine. In central Switzerland around Lake Lucerne there’ll certainly be a bit of Sbrinz in the mix, while over in eastern Switzerland, Appenzeller and Tilsiter will likely share the honours.

Get creative yourself and come up with your own fondue mixture, using your personal favourites. Aim for a balance of two or three different kinds: something feisty/hard like Gruyère, L’Etivaz or Berner Alpkäse; something smooth and mild-mannered (Emmentaler – but Swiss only, please, none of those dreary wannabes that taste of soap) and some semi-hard, melting cheese (Vacherin Fribourgeois, Appenzeller, Tilsiter, Tête de Moine). Fainthearts and those of delicate digestion will content themselves with 150g of cheese each;  serious cheeseheads and those with iron stomachs can handle 200g without turning a hair (and then ask what’s for mains…)

The white wine and the lemon juice are there for a reason – not only do they season the mixture, their acidity also helps to prevent curdling. (Young cheeses, btw, are more likely to separate than older, aged ones – make sure your cheeses are, if not mature, at least not in the first flush of youth – certainly no younger than 8 months.) It’s also important to keep stirring the fondue not only during the heating but also during the eating – first with a large wooden fork and stirring in a figure of eight, and – at table – using bread-speared fondue forks.

And what to drink with fondue? White wine seems logical, since it enters into the composition of the dish, but some people (notably those to the north of the Rostigraben) consider that cool white wine can turn the cheese into chewing gum inside you, and that warm black or peppermint tea is preferable. A shot of Kirsch or other Schnapps, said to aid digestion, is also frequently offered.

As for the pan, this must be a wide, shallow, earthenware caquelon, not one of those metal fondue bourguignonne pans. And when you’re done, and the last crumbs of croute/réligieuse have been prised off the bottom of the caquelon, fill it with cold water and let it soak a few hours or overnight. That way any stray bits of cheese will come away without much opposition.

Serves 6
plenty of good, well-crusted bread
900g – 1.2 kg mixed cheese (see suggestions above), coarsely grated
1 clove garlic, mashed
400ml dry white wine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
a little freshly grated nutmeg
2 tsp cornflour/cornstarch (Maizena)
1 small glass Kirsch, optional
black pepper

• Cut the bread in good chunks, making sure that each piece has some crust, and put in a basket on the table
• Put the grated cheese, garlic, wine, lemon juice, nutmeg and cornflour/cornstarch into the caquelon and mix well to distribute the cornflour/cornstarch
  
• Heat over a gentle flame, stirring constantly, until wisps of steam start to rise and the cheese is evenly melted and beginning to emit gentle bubbles and burps
• If using Kirsch, stir it in now, and season generously with black pepper
• Transfer the caquelon to a spirit burner and instruct everyone to get spearing and stirring

SEVILLE ORANGE MARMALADE WITH LEMONS AND KUMQUATS

Making marmalade perfumes the house with marvellous, citrussy breakfasty smells and it’s not such a hassle as you might imagine. You can break it down into several steps and time the whole operation to your convenience. First cook the fruit whole until soft, then cut in half, scoop out the pith and pips and parcel them up into a muslin or J-cloth, and shred the peel. Then boil up the shredded peel with water and sugar. The lemons and kumquats aren’t essential, but they add a nice piquant touch.

Makes 8-10 x 450g jars
1.5 kg Seville oranges (about 12)
2 lemons
12 kumquats
water
2kg white sugar
500g brown sugar

• Wash the fruit, put it (whole) in a preserving pan and add water to cover amply
• Bring to a boil and simmer until oranges are quite soft and a fingernail will easily pierce the rind – about an hour
• Lift the fruit out of the water with a slotted spoon, pour the water into a measuring jug
• Cut fruit in half, scoop out all the pith and pips
• Put pith and pips in a muslin or J-cloth, close up tightly and tie with string
• Chop the rind (finely or coarsely, as you wish) and put back in the pan
• Add enough water to the reserved cooking liquid to bring it up to 2 litres
• Pour this over the chopped rind, add the bag of pith/pips
• Add the sugar and bring the pan to a rolling boil – it should boil vigorously but watch it doesn’t boil over
• Put a small saucer in the freezer to check setting point of the marmalade
• Boil marmalade for anything from 40 minutes to 1 hour – it should be reduced by about one-third and the last drops from a spoon will fall away slightly stickily – test for setting by tipping a little into the chilled saucer and draw a finger through the marmalade: it should leave a distinct channel, like Moses and the Red Sea, and the surface of the marmalade will wrinkle slightly. If not, continue to boil.
• Once setting point is reached, pour into clean, warm jars and cover while still hot

My most recent article in Decanter, January issue, is about wine travel in Catalunya and gives an overview of the region’s multiple charms, with thumbnail sketches of selected wineries, plus where to stay and where to eat. As with any article, I always seem to have loads of great surplus material that I have to steel myself to excise, for lack of space. Top of my list of surplus stuff in this instance were two places I’d love to have given more air time to: Restaurant U in Les Gunyoles d’Avinyonet in the heart of the Penedès wine-growing district (home of cava), and winery Mas Candí (website in Catalan only) in the same village.

I admit I approached Restaurant U with some trepidation. Local folks, including wine growers and our hosts at the delightful B&B Cal Mestre in Les Gunyoles, had vaguely mentioned ‘medieval cuisine’. I had visions of troubadors blowing trumpets and oxen on spits. A visit to the resto’s website (dark and brooding and inscrutable) didn’t increase my confidence. Thank goodness I listened to Nico James (www.nicojames.es), a wine expert in the Penedès region, who organised and booked a lunch for us.

We were met out in the road by beaming chef-patron Raimón Olivella  – just as well, for the restaurant is cunningly concealed in a narrow residential street just across from the village recycling bins and doesn’t really look like a restaurant at all (in fact it’s his home). Raimón ushered us in (we were the only guests, this being Monday when he’s usually closed), we unfurled napkins and waited expectantly, even a tad nervously.

To my relief, of medieval there was little trace – certainly no minstrels or meats on the spit – just a scorching litany of dishes that made this one of the best meals we had in the entire two week trip – actually, make that one of the best of 2011. Between each plate – a tiny smoked sardine with quince paste and honey reduction, a rustic-chic triangle of yeasty pastry with goat’s cheese on a rocket salad, lollipops of two fat prawns curled up together yin-yang style and impaled on sticks with a drizzle of soja and rocket oil, an escabeche of partridge en salade with toasted pine nuts, a perfectly cooked piece of firm hake set on a stack of wok-fried veggies, a mercifully small piece of boned baby lamb cooked 5 hours in a cool oven with a castle of pumpkin and baby onions and red wine sauce – Raimón appeared from the kitchen to explain and introduce his creations. The only dish with any kind of medieval pretensions was the pudding, a gooey cake that felt like it was made of chocolate but was actually from [pre-Colombian] carob.

Raimón also introduced us to the wines of Mas Candí, a young winery just down the road founded in 2006 by four likeminded mates: Ramón Jané, Ramón Galimany, Toni Carbo and Mercè Cuscó. All four own vines in the vicinity, all have day jobs, and they share vine-growing and winemaking tasks and facilities – like a mini-cooperative. Two of them studied winemaking in Burgundy, which doesn’t mean they’ve gone overboard for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; in fact their focus is on resurrecting indigenous Catalan varieties and vinifying them in unaccustomed ways – e.g. making still wines from Xarel-lò, Penedés’s visiting card, and one of the chief components of cava; or blending little-known local varieties (Sumoll, Mandó, Cannonau, Roigenc, Mónica) with Cabernet Sauvignon to give a powerful, sunbaked, terroir-driven wine which they’ve called Sol [sun] y Sòl [soil].

To preface our lunch, Raimón served their gently flowery, fine-bubbled cava, while their Desig (pure, un-oaked Xarel-lò, pure flowers and lemon) was great with the smoked sardine combo. Les Forques – a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and some of those Catalan specialities – made a great match with the fork-tender lamb in red wine sauce. (There were others, tasted after our lunch at the winery, but my notes – and my memory – are a little blurry…)

Banish the winter blues, get yourself down to Barcelona and drive or get the train to the Penedès (it’s close enough to the city to nip down for the day) for a tasting at Mas Candí and a meal at Restaurant U. And if you really, really can’t do that, Vinissimus, online retailer based in the UK, sells Mas Candí wines. But then you’d be missing out on Restaurant U. Which would be a great shame.

Here’s the thing: real men go for plump, well filled quiches – think Rubens rather than Modigliani. Away with your slender, low-fat jobs, a quiche is (or should be) something succulent and delicious. The only absolute no-no is soggy bottoms (pace Rubens).

Here’s an all-purpose recipe for a 26 cm quiche feeding 4 averagely hungry folks or 6 with delicate appetites. Keep the number 4 in mind: you need 400g solids + 4 eggs + 400ml of mixed cream and milk, plus seasonings and herbs – oh and the pastry that will cradle it all. It works brilliantly as a fairly elegant dustbin for anything you may find lurking in the fridge. Well, not absolutely anything, but something delish that somehow escaped predations and which may be getting close to its sell-by (or is it use before?) date.

Heat the oven to 180C, preferably using only bottom heat. (Gas ovens are hopeless for quiches because the heat always soars up into the roof, which is why they always give pallid pastry. Electric are good, especially the kinds where you can select a good blast of bottom heat. And Agas, for once, come into their own here.)

Buy a ready-rolled 28cm circle of puff or shortcrust pastry (or roll out 250g pastry to a 28cm circle) and arrange it in a lightly buttered 26cm quiche pan, best of all a black metal one with removable base, though at a pinch a pallid metal one will do. (Do NOT use one of those wavy-edged, wedding-present ceramic dishes, which will guarantee soggy bottoms as the pastry will never cook through – keep these for tomato and mozzarella salad.)

Arrange your 400g selected solids in the pastry case.

Crack your 4 eggs into a bowl, add a 200ml tub of crème fraîche and the same volume of milk, season with salt and pepper and beat to a frenzy – a wire whisk is fine, a hand-held blender even better. Then add the herb – finely chopped – that will best match your solids. The quiche I just made, pictured above, was from smoked salmon trimmings left over after Christmas/New Year and some finely shredded, crunchy-cooked cabbage and broccoli, ditto, so I used dill. If I’d used up the jambon-pipérade that’s also lurking in the fridge, I’d have gone for snipped basil, or (since it’s winter, fresh basil is in short supply and dried is dire) a splodge of green or red pesto.

Pour this eggy/creamy mixture over your solids and put the quiche in the oven, close to the bottom so tha pastry is getting a good blast of heat. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the quiche is puffed up, golden and fragrant and the filling is no longer wobbly when nudged.

Share with a real man – or anyone else who may appreciate the wonder of such things.

The Ferme Auberge du Rain des Chênes is the real deal. Owned and run by various members of the Chaize family, fully 70% of the food prepared and served on the premises comes from the 30-hectare farm, which has 30 Montbéliarde cows (left) and 120 chubby pink pigs. Monsieur and Madame Chaize take care of the farm and make Munster and Barkas (a semi-hard mountain cheese), butter, fromage blanc and yogurt. Surplus whey from cheese making is fed to the pigs. Their son is in the kitchen, while their daughter is front-of-house.

The food is simple, copious, and reasonably priced (menus range from €18.50-€24) – expect tried and tested favourites like tourte (flaky-crusted pork pie that’s served warm), choucroute, Baeckeoffe, fresh and smoked pork in various guises, cordon bleu, some epic pommes frites mamie (Grandma’s chips/fries, hunky and disgracefully good, with skins intact), fruit tarts and the house fromage blanc battu, smooth and creamy and served with a lick of home-made bilberry jam.

To get there you need to head up the valley from Kaysersberg. While you’re in the neighbourhood, you may want to look in on this classic Alsace village, birthplace of Albert Schweitzer, with its gorgeous half-timbered, pastel-shaded houses, some decent restaurants (the Winstub du Chambard), a spectacular Christmas market – mark your card for next year – and the famous Faller family winery just outside the village at Domaine Weinbach.

Then wend your way on up into the hills to Orbey and press onwards and upwards in the direction of Basses Huttes. The Rain des Chênes is higher still (at around 750 metres above sea level), quite well signed, set beside the road in a spectacular position with sweeping views down the valley. In winter, take refuge from the elements in the cosy, beamy, chalet-style dining room; in summer you’ll want to be out on the ample terrace/deck looking down onto wild flower-speckled meadows and within sight of your lunch, which will be grazing or rooting about below (all the meat served here is raised on the farm; it’s part of the ferme auberge deal).

A stack of Fruchttortes at Café Decker, Staufen

Last weekend we nipped across the Rhine to give our friends from Beaujolais a little taste of the Black Forest. After an impressive lunch at the Kreuz-Post in Staufen (it’s going into Eating Out in Alsace, Basel and Baden sharpish) followed by a quick raid on the Christmas market and a visit to the Schladerer distillery for Himbeergeist miniatures for stockings, we took refuge from the Faustian blast in Café Decker. This, as you surely know, is one of the Schwarzwald’s finest shrines to Kaffee und Kuchen, and it was full to bursting with happy families feasting on mile-high cakes and steaming mugs of hot choccy and coffee with whipped cream.

There’s a dazzling display of amazing cakes, pralines, Christmas cookies and baked goods of every shape and size, all made downstairs in the laboratory-kitchen. Herr Decker, silver-haired and sprightly (he can’t ever eat any of those cakes, can he?), moves around at speed, checking on orders, refurbishing vitrines and greeting faithful customers. You find a table – easier said than done: sharp elbows and eyes are needed – then you settle down and place your order for drinks with a buxom lady. Then you sally forth to the counter at the front where you are faced with an impossible task: choosing between Sachertorte, Quarktorte, Schwarzwalderkirschtorte, Fruchttorte, Linzertorte and about 16 other tortes whose names escape me.

The euro may be shaky, the economy limping along and the weather shocking but it’s somehow deeply reassuring to find that the great German tradition of Kaffee und Kuchen is alive and well and living in Staufen (and scores of other towns throughout Germany).

Café Decker's Christmas Gingerbread House