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Posts Tagged ‘Swiss’

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. Read the rest of this entry »