Kictribe.com

Mention Switzerland, most people inevitably think of cheese. The Swiss themselves think a lot about cheese, too. These days, the Swiss attitude to cheese seems to have become slightly more satirical : “There’s no wife can prepare a fondue like any good Swiss.”

Fondue had something of a vogue overseas in the 1970′s, but it is dtill going to strong in Switzerland, where it is practically the national dish. It’s made with melted cheese in a pot that has been rubbed with garlic. White wine matbe a dash of kirsch ai also added.

The  recipe for fondue and much more can find at the local dairy in Gruyere north of the Lake of Geneva in western Switzerland, where the famous cheese of (almost) the same name is made. The village dairy its name, is open for visitors who want to see the highlight technical side of the cheese making procees, and gleams with steel and white tiles. Silver pipes and tubes wind themselves from one big industrial vat to another, and everything is washed down from  blue host by a man in white wellington boots, a long white apron and a sterile cap. The dairy looks like an operating theater in the hospital, encased in glass as if to seal it off from the very mountain air on which the cows thrive.

Milk is brought in from the surrounding farms, where it is place in huge vats and heated until curdled. The curdled milk is then cut with a harp. Visitors can buy cheese aplenty at the dairy.

Cheese isn’t the only reason to visit Gruyeres, this is also one of the fines remaining examples of a fortified medieval village in all Europe. A small market town grew up here in the thirteenth century, and many of the medieval buildings remain, surrounded almost entirely by walls and others fortifications. In the village square, you can see stone blocks carved with hollows, used as grain measures for the medieval markets that once took place here every Sunday.

Further into the village lies a small church, which is the only remnant of a Carthusian monastery that was founded in 1307 and dissolved five hundred years later. Here, the monks once sat in solitude in single cells, contemplating the spiritual life and tending to their small gardens. They certainly never ventured as far as the castle on top of the hill. The castle belongs to the counts of Gruyeres and built at the eleven century. The present structure was built by Count Louis II in 1493. Inside the apartments display period furniture : huge wooden chest, high-backed chairs, various threadbare tapestries, and some church vestments of heavy brocade and gold cloth.

Visitors to the castle will no doubt return to the village with a healthy appetite.They many restaurants in Gruyeres, although pricey, offer the chance to try cheese Swiss specialities. There is plenty of rosti on offer, a dish of grated cheese and fried potatoes to which is added bacon an onion. Once breakfast for the peasant of the lower Alps, rosti is know a favourite with Swiss Germans.

The Swiss have come a long way since then, but as Gruyeres shows, they are still keen to preserve to something of their past history, not to mentions theirs culinary tradition.

Certainly there’s no more pleasant way of spending a day than wandering around the village and then finding a cosy corner in a restaurant to sample the cheese that is made here.

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