Swiss Fondue

Last night we gathered at Nico's for some cheese fondue. Martin's parents make cheese fondue fairly often so I was interested to see how a Swiss person would make this Swiss specialty ... if it would taste any differently or if any secret ingredients were used.

Obviously, they can use slightly different cheese in Switzerland that is not available in the US. They still use gruyere and emmentaler but they also use Appenzeller which you can probably find in specialty stores in the US (I've never seen it) but it probably costs quite a bit.

Nico decorated the table quite nicely with Swiss flag napkins:



I'm not sure there were any secret ingredients involved that I was unaware of other than the use of Appenzeller cheese but the fondue tasted very different to me. More cheesy and less winey, at least in our pot. The pot on the other side of the table tasted more winey. They were both good, of course. Here's Martin digging in:



And to go with fondue, you apparently have to drink cherry schnapps. Nico said there's an argument and some people like pear schnapps better but the tradition is cherry schnapps. The one on the left is cherry schnapps, unlabeled and sketchy looking because it's homemade:



It was quite tasty and possibly better than the store-bought bottle of cherry schnapps we moved on to when we ran out of the homemade stuff. In Switzerland you have to have a license to make your own alcohol ... unless you own a cow. If you own a cow then you don't need the license. Maybe that's why there are so many cows in Switzerland! But they sure are happy cows with all the pretty vistas they have in the mountains.

Here's our American friend Nick, on the right, and his friend Tom who was visiting from the US. It was his first try of cheese fondue and he was a big fan:



Here's a round of schnapps. It is some sort of rule that when your pot is half finished you do a round of schnapps. Then afterwards I guess you just do them randomly or sip schnapps at your leisure because it supposedly aids in digestion.



It's also traditional to drink tea throughout the meal, hot tea, either black or green or herbal I don't think it matters. I drank some herbal mint tea and I'm pretty sure that that helped my stomach more than all the schnapps.

And of course here's our host Nico, on the right, with Oliver and Oliver's girlfriend whom I managed to catch in the middle of saying something:



Another thing Nico invited some people to try was snuff which is basically tobacco that you snort through your nose and seems popular in Switzerland. Nico is in the middle of his annual three weeks of Swiss army training and apparently they do snuff all day long during training (but don't touch it the rest of the year because it will ruin your nose). I think they have to though in order to stay awake for 18 hours per day hauling heavy packs around in the mountains (I believe Nico said he has to carry around anti-tank missiles). He's in the mountain infantry so mountains are what they do. Anyway you just put it onto your hand and inhale it and before everybody did it they all had to hold their hands in the middle like you see below while some funny Swiss saying was read (it was different every time but always funny):



None of the ladies would go near it (and some of the guys stayed away as well). Definitely not my cup of tea!