Too clever for my own good?

Last night my husband and I went to dinner at a friend's house.  The plan was that she would make the main course and I'd do the pudding, so I had made the coffee torte with layered morning coffee biscuits, which I think I mentioned in "The competitive spirit..." post.  She also kindly said she would pick us up, so we could both have some wine and get a taxi the five miles home at the end of the evening.

On the way there though, she admitted that she was nervous cooking for me as a guest.  This was the second time this month that someone had said this, and now I'm starting to get a little worried!  I really never considered that anyone would actually think I was that good a cook to be bothered about what I might think of their cooking.  What if this puts people off inviting us to dinner? That would be a shame.  On the other hand, I was quite flattered.  As you might have already read, I've had my fair share of disasters.  A recipe went in the bin only the other day...  I've still got a lot to learn.  The friend I was going to dinner with is in my opinion just as good a cook as I am, in fact we spend a fair amount of time talking about food and swapping ideas.

As it was, she need not have worried.  I always concentrate on the good points (unlike my Dad who always has to find something to say: "As a counsel of perfection....").  I might suggest an improvement, but I'm happy enough that someone has put in the time and effort to cook for me, and wouldn't insult them by insulting their food.  Even the husband, who is my harshest critic and has even been known to denounce a dish as "disappointing!" before he has even tasted it - afterwards being forced to quite literally eat his words - is not critical of anyone else's home cooking but mine.  Anyway, the friend's main course was a delicious Moroccan dish with spiced minced lamb in filo pastry with poppy seeds, accompanied by a carrot salad and pitta breads; and there were clean plates and compliments all round.

In other news, Lidl have got various treats in store for the Christmas season including cooked frozen lobsters and frozen macarons.  I had to buy the macarons to see what they were like and to be honest if you don't fancy making them, they're not half bad.  We bought a lobster as I had never prepared one and fancied a challenge.  My son kept asking if "Lobby" the lobster was defrosted yet as he really wanted to help me prepare him.  I used a cherry stoner/olive pitter to crack the claws  and once we had got the meat out of the claws, arms and tail (all in one piece on my first go) we made a herb mayonnaise and had the lobster with it on bread with a sprinking of red chilli. I even eat the liver and kept the pieces of shell to make stock with a view to some kind of lobster soup for the husband's birthday.

 



Today I'm going to make the 100th new recipe of 2012, jam roly poly.  You might be subjected to some statistics at the end of the year, I've slowed down a bit so I'm not going to break any records, but it's nice to still break 100.

Thank you for reading, more soon, the Christmas dinner plans are coming on well.

Caroline x

The Quest for New Ingredients

A few weeks ago I somehow managed to invite ten family members for Christmas dinner, which with the four of us will make a total of fourteen.  I am quite looking forward to it and will write a post on the planning and outcome at a later date.  One of the things that sprang to mind was the possibility of a black forest trifle for a Christmas dessert,  I have been researching it and decided to include cherries in kirsch, allegedly available in Sainsburys.  However, the procurement of said cherries has not proved easy...

One of the few good points of living in a city for me would be the easy availability of any ingredient you could wish for, probably even key limes.  Living in a small village means that sometimes even in the nearest large towns I can't find what I want, so I have to search online and pay postage and wait for ages for whatever it is, or travel to a city, or substitute for a similar, but usually less successful ingredient.  If I do go to London or somewhere, I look out for shops which might sell interesting ingredients, rather than looking for clothes as the average woman might...

Going back to the cherries - I tried ebay with no success at all.  I tried Amazon, who had them but you either had to buy six jars at once, the postage cost was more than the cost of the item, the availability was stated as "four to six weeks" or in one case the customer review said they were bitter and went in the bin (which after today's experiment with radicchio... but we won't go there at the moment!)  So I had the bright idea of asking my friends on facebook to have a look for me if they happened to be going to a large Sainsburys or a Waitrose (who always seem to have all kinds of things you didn't even know you wanted and make you spend a fortune). Two of them kindly offered to help, and at the time of writing one has looked with no success and the other hasn't got back to me.  I feel I might need to resort to Plan B - either getting some fresh cherries and cooking them in Kirsch and sugar, or just cheating and mixing tinned cherries with the liqueur.  Either way, I get the rest of the bottle to play with!

 

 

Speaking of liqueuers, they ARE well worth buying online.  I've discovered a wonderful website called drinks direct who sell virtually every liqueur known to man.  A trifle makers heaven!  And they often have special offers on.  It was there I purchased the vanilla galliano for the first of my designer trifles.  I also got white Creme de Cacao, which was unavailable in Asda; and a gorgeous lychee liqueur, which has been half drunk already without being used in any recipes at all!  I was going to add a splash of it to my celebrated lychee cava cocktails: liquidise a tin of lychees in syrup, freeze in ice cube trays, then pop one in a flute and top up with cava or champagne.

Despite my lack of success with the cherries I have managed to get quite a few ingredients online. Liquid glucose, membrillo (quince paste - which I cut into chunks and had on sticks with manchego cheese but didn't like it as it tasted too much like honey), matcha green tea powder - used to make green tea icing for cupcakes, Japanese panko breadcrumbs.  Wing Yip is an online Chinese supermarket I have used in the past, when my sister was alive we used to combine orders, and buy things like five spice powder in bulk and share them.  Another friend of mine sometimes goes to Leicester and gets me massive packs of garam masala and cumin seeds from Indian supermarkets.

I have this happy vision  of my retirement that I will live somewhere near the sea, and I can spend my twilight years finding lovely fresh fish and other ingredients on a daily basis, forgetting the menu planning and shopping lists, having time to browse in a market and see what's available without being in a rush, and having the time to play around in the kitchen inventing recipes...  one day...

Thank you for reading,

Caroline x :-)

The competetive spirit... or not.

Last weekend I came second in a pudding competition, for the second time.  I'm not really a very competetive person.  I applied to go on the tv show "Come Dine With Me" a while ago and got down to the last twenty for the local episode, but no further.  When I watched the programme I realised I had had a lucky escape... I didn't think much to the food or the people... but I would definitely have won if I had been a contestant due to the low standard of the other participants!  I wouldn't want to go on "Masterchef" as I would never want to make cooking a career, it would be too much pressure, the hours are dreadful and I would stop enjoying it.  Family and friends can forgive the odd disaster (see a previous post - What could possibly go wrong?) but paying customers probably wouldn't.  I am considering "The Great British Bake Off", though I would have a lot to learn, it does look like a lot of fun, and I DO love baking.  We will see.

Back to the pudding competitions.  About six months ago, my Mum told me about a pudding competition that was being held in her village for the first time.  The idea was to raise funds towards a new village hall.  People would make one or more puddings and bring them along to the village hall where members of the public would taste as many of them as their stomachs could handle for the princely sum of £3 and then vote for their favourite by means of a marble in a plastic cup. The pudding with the most marbles would then be declared the winner and it's creator would receive a silver trophy (donated by a kind benefactor).  Tea and coffee would be included. 

I telephoned the organiser beforehand to check I would be eligible as I didn't live in the village.  I was.  I also wanted to check what their definition of a pudding was.  She said "anything that you would like to eat for pudding".  So I made a raspberry rose tart and a coffee, chocolate and mascarpone torte and duly turned up on the day, putting my identity underneath the serving plate as requested.  There were sixteen puddings, some of which were totally consumed.  The village hall was packed with willing tasters, and £190 was raised.  When the winners were announced, my raspberry tart actually came bottom with no votes (I think the base was too hard, but it did taste nice) but the torte came second, losing out by one vote to a banoffee pie.

Having said I'm not competitive, I was a little bit miffed.  Banoffee pie does taste nice, true, but doesn't involve much skill (tinned caramel?), and was "thrown together" in the words of its creator; whereas my torte involved lovingly piecing together eighty morning coffee biscuits soaked in kahlua and strong coffee, with coffee butter icing and grated chocolate in between each layer, and enveloping the whole thing in vanilla mascarpone cream decoarated with chocolate stars.  Ho Hum.  There is always next year.

Last weekend, a similar event was held by the opera group I sing with, to raise funds for the production. It was organised in exactly the same way, we had twenty-two puddings entered and it raised about £120.  This time I made a Mars bar cheesecake and a strawberry and mascarpone swiss roll, and the cheesecake came second.  The winner this time was my personal favourite, a raspberry and white chocolate meringue roulade, though I also loved the chocolate orange profiteroles, which happened to be made by the same person.

Interestingly, in both competitions there were duplicate entries.  The first one had two tiramisus (that IS the plural, I checked, wondering if it was just tiramisu) and the second had two bakewell tarts (one with jam, one with mincemeat) and two bread puddings.  One of the bread puddings looked like a burnt brick but actually tasted fantastic, and not burnt at all, it was slightly chewy but in a good way and tasted much better than the other more stylish one.  There was a fantastic selection and a very high standard throughout and I did try ALL the puddings in both competitions, though only a very little bit of each!

View from one end of the table, last slice of Swiss roll in the foreground...

 

 



 

And from the other end.

 

 

The coffee, chocolate and mascarpone torte from the first competition.

 

 

After both competitions, I didn't eat anything sweet or indeed puddingy for quite some time.

 

On another note, this weekend I have (possibly rashly) invited lots of family for Christmas dinner, there might be up to sixteen of us.  Luckily, quite a few of them have offered to help either cooking various aspects of the meal, peeling spuds or having the children so they're out of the way.  I've started to get quite excited!

 

More soon, thank you for reading,

 

Caroline x

Waste not, want not.

Our council has recently introduced a food waste collection.  Reading the leaflet that accompanied the new food waste bin, I was horrified to discover that FORTY-ONE PERCENT by weight of black bin (ie non recyclable) waste is food waste.  What a waste of money, fuel, energy, water and time.

Various friends assured me I would be surprised at the amount of waste that would go in my bin once the time came to start using it, and claimed that it would be filled up on a weekly basis, but actually hardly anything goes in. According to my research the average household generates 3.2kg of food waste weekly, ours is less than 700g. And no, although I do have some OCD tendencies, I don't weigh it every week!  According to an article in the Guardian last year household food waste has reduced by 13% in three years, but is still costing the consumer the same due to inflation.  Food waste generated by UK families in a year will still completely fill Wembley stadium nine times, (rather than ten times) though, so to be honest there is still a lot of room for improvement.There are various reasons why our family generates so little food waste, and I thought it might make for an interesting blog post.

Firstly, we are a family that eats just about everything.  I was brought up to keep trying things until I did like them, and I am doing the same with my own children because it really worked.  There are foods I don't prefer, but apart from honey on toast and liquorice I don't really dislike anything.  So leftovers can be eaten by anyone, and it makes menu planning (see later) much easier.  It also makes a big difference if you have someone in the family who doesn't mind using up broken biscuits, manky fruit from the dregs of the fruit bowl and end-of-packet cereal dust.  That will be me then.

We compost at home, anything that can be composted. Peelings, teabags, fruit cores, etc, also handy for disposal of shredded confidential documents.  My parents were surprised when I started composting as I'm not into gardening and have a garden the size of a postage stamp, just big enough to grow some herbs in.  I didn't start composting to get some free compost, but rather to cut down on unaviodable food waste such as peelings going to landfill. I have actually given away my home made compost via freecycle! I don't put eggshells, avocoado peel or stones or other large fruit stones such as mango stones in as they just don't decompose fast enough in a domestic setting, so they DO go in the food waste bin, along with bones, the odd burnt toast crust and the very occasional plate scraping.

The contents of our food waste bin after two weeks: two little bags.

I often have leftovers for the next day's lunch - and it makes a change from boring sandwiches.

Plan your meals weekly and only buy what you actually need - I usually do the food shopping on Saturday mornings so I sit down on a Thurday or Friday night with a list of what will be in the Tuesday vegbox (they email it to me), a list of what needs using up in the fridge, and my recipe folders, cookery books, magazines etc and plan menus for the week, this also helps to keep costs down.  I've got a list of items we always need, the "weekly check" such as teabags, coffee, cereals, milk, fruit; and I go through that checking what we need.  I have a look at the calendar and see what everyone is doing, so I know whether we need something super quick on a particular day, or if I can indulge myself with a new recipe midweek.  Sometimes it does have to be different meals for different family members, or if the husband is going out I can look forward to having something he doesn't particularly like.  I usually have something in the freezer for emergency last minute changes of plan too.

Speaking of the freezer,  use it well. I always freeze sliced bread for my son's sandwiches and get out a third or half a loaf at a time, as we don't use much sliced bread.  Bread which does go stale can be made into breadcrumbs.  If I make a cake and cut bits off it to shape it they get frozen for the next trifle.  Also roast chicken carcases get frozen and made into stock several at a time.

Use store cupboard ingredients, but keep track of what you've got, do a "cabinet reshuffle" every few months so you don't forget what you've got.

Don't take too much notice of best before dates.  If it has gone off, you can usually tell. If cheese goes mouldy I cut off the outside and the middle is fine.  That said, check the dates when you go shopping to make sure you don't buy something that won't keep until you've planned to use it.

Apples too elderly to be palatable raw can be used to top a pork chop, my husband's signature dish is pork chops with apples and prunes; or made into apple sauce.  Over ripe bananas can be transformed into banana bread or put in a smoothie.  Past its best veg can be roasted and even put in a tart. One of my favourite books with tips for reducing food waste is Economy Gastronomy, a tie in with a TV series from 2009 (at present from £6.53 on amazon).

The love food hate waste website is also recommended: www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.

So, I challenge YOU to reduce your food waste!  If everyone just tried a little bit harder, we might fill less Wembley stadiums next year :-)

Thank you for reading, more soon.

Caroline x

A love of puddings versus healthy eating.

I am often asked, "Why are you not the size of a house when you make so many puddings, cakes and sweet things?"  This blog post aims to answer this question. I weigh a tiny bit more than  the average UK woman but am two dress sizes smaller for reasons which for now are a mystery to me. My weight is quite stable and doesn't fluctuate much, the only times I have lost lots of weight have been just after having a baby or when I have been very unhappy, and I don't plan on being in either of those situations again if I can help it.

So, what's my strategy for not putting on weight?  First and foremost, it's all about portion control.  I never deny myself anything. I always have butter rather than margarine.  However I have learned (and it HAS taken a few years!) not to overdo it.  My Mum always said "All things in moderation" when we were growing up and it was sage advice.  Here is an example.  As some readers may know, I LOVE peanut butter kitkat chunky bars.  When they were discontinued I was so heartbroken I emailed the manufacturers to ask why, and was told demand was too low to justify relatively high manufacturing costs. When they relaunched them recently with a competition to find the 'chunky champion' I voted my little heart out and was over the moon when peanut butter got 47% of the vote and was chosen to be permanently relaunched.  You get the picture.  Anyway I have HALF a bar every weekday when I am at work.  I find a whole one is just a bit too much.  People are amazed I can eat half a bar of chocolate and save the other half for another day.  But I can.  We try to only have chips once a week, and crisps at the weekend.  We only have puddings on Sundays and for special occasions.  When you keep treats really as a treat, they become more of one.

Also, I do really love vegetables, especially greens, I feel a bit wierd if I go a day without eating something green.  Another great quote I remember hearing once was "Green food = good.  Beige food = bad."  And although I love sweet things I would always rather have an extra helping of veg than an extra helping of pudding.  Sometimes I can have my five a day in one meal.  My husband maintains that its all the vegetables I feed him that are keeping him healthy despite smoking and drinking lots of red wine. It all balances out.

While on the subject of wine, I've found that as the years go by I am getting to be more and more of a lightweight when it comes to alcoholic beverages, and although I love the taste I am not able to drink as much without feeling the after effects.  These days I would rather have a lesser amount of something a bit special than lots of a bog standard 'three-for-a-tenner' bottle.  If I do find my clothes getting tight, just cutting out the wine for a while and the associated crisps and snacks which seem to accompany it seems to do the trick and help me lose a few pounds. I use wine and liqueurs in cooking quite a bit, but you get the taste without too many calories and often the alcohol is cooked off.

And there is chocolate.  My children and I always have chocolate first thing in the morning at weekends, it has become something of a tradition in our house.  However we don't have massive bars of dairy milk, just a little chocolate stick from Lidl - they have a sort of creamy filling, come in packets of eleven and are just enough to feel like a treat but only about the size of one kitkat finger.  Chocolate, like wine, is something where I prefer quality rather than quantity.  I'm a member of the Chocolate Tasting Club and can make one box of quality chocolates last four weeks, even including sharing them with my family.  They are so deluxe you only want two at the most in one go, and they are far more satisfying with less calories than a big bar of mainstream chocolate.

Breakfast is really important to keep me going and I always have it, usually granola or weetabix but I also love an egg on toast.  Sometimes I scramble eggs but mostly I cook one or two in a small non stick milk pan with a tiny bit of oil, on a medium heat with a saucer on top, sort of fried but healthier.  If I've been making macaroons, a leftover egg yolk (or two!) can be added to make it extra proteinaceous!

True, I enjoy making puddings and sweet treats, but I also really enjoy sharing them.  A large part of the joy of cooking is making friends and family happy by cooking them something special. I'm happy with a small piece of whatever it is, so that there is plenty for everyone else.

I've learned to stop eating when I'm full, but this doesn't make for waste, because I often have any leftovers for the next days lunch.  Our family creates hardly any food waste, everything that can be composted is, and at the time of writing our food waste bin is less than half full in three weeks....  but the food waste issue is something to be discussed in a future post.

Here's a picture of today's new recipe pudding: pear, almond and amaretto tart (from the new Lorraine Pascale book), and one of the proteinaceous breakfast:

Thank you for reading, more soon....

Caroline x

What could possibly go wrong?

Yesterday I made a toad-in-the-hole, however the Yorkshire pudding (or Yorkshture pudding as my son calls it!) part was sadly flat and unrisen, although it tasted ok.  I have never been very consistent with Yorkshire pudding, I think it is all to do with the size of tin versus the quantity of mixture, sometimes it's a triumph and sometimes, like yesterday, it's frankly rubbish.  This got me thinking about what could go wrong in the kitchen, and as I usually only share successes with the community at large I thought it might be confession time!

As far as my husband and I can remember, I have never cooked anything that has actually been inedible.  Interestingly the very first new recipe after I made my resolution (see "Welcome post") has been the only one ever to score only one star out of the possible five. It was a Nigella recipe for smoked cod with cannellini beans and included some peppercorns in the sauce.  I accidentally put too many in, and you were meant to remove them before serving , but as there were so many it would have taken forever and the food would have been cold so I just intructed the husband to leave them on the side of the plate.  This did not work.  They were too disguised by the sauce and every now and then you would crunch on one, flooding your mouth with pepperiness. Several years later I made another fish dish with chinese Sichuan peppercorns, crushed in the pestle and mortar, and these were really rather nice, not quite as peppery as the normal ones; but after the smoked cod disaster I didn't risk it on the husband and had it by myself while he was away.

There have also been recipes that have just been plain boring and tasteless.  It can be quite disappointing when you're looking forward to something new and then you have to put sweet chilli sauce on it to make it taste of anything at all.  For example tagliatelle with pancetta, lemon, broccoli and walnuts.  Sounds quite flavoursome. It wasn't. I've had similar experiences with quiches and curries.  You never know with chillies either, they can be bland as anything or fearsomly hot. Sometimes the flavour doesn't live up to the smell either which is worse. Even in a recipe taken from a magazine, the flavours just may not work, like haddock, prawn and cheese bake.  I never put cheese in a fish risotto so I was dubious about this one, and rightly so.

Desserts and cakes have lots of potential for problems.  In particular things that need to be set, with gelatine or agar.  There was the time I made a mars bar cheesecake, which I had made a few times before and was very popular.  I thought I knew what I was doing and decided to have a few cans of cider while making it.  Mistake.  I didn't dissolve the gelatine properly and as you consumed the cheesecake lumps of gluey, bogey-like gelatine got left in your mouth.  Most people politely left them on the side of the plate.  Then there was the strawberry mousse cake which didn't have enough gelatine in it.  When removed from the tin it looked fab but after a few minutes began to collapse and go a bit free-form.  I made another one a few weeks later with more gelatine and much better results. A similar thing happened with my limoncello cheesecake which used vegetarian gel powder, you have to use it differently to gelatine and I didn't... but rescued it with an hour in the freezer.  I've made cakes that weren't cooked in the middle and had to be turned into a ring cake with fruit piled up in the middle. I haven't ever tried to bake something with the oven on grill setting, but I know people that have, I'm lucky enough to have a separate grill.

 Strawberry mousse cake take one: oo-er!

 Take two: much better.

I've made naan bread that was more biscuit than bread, burnt things and set fire to things, made a coconut delight that was anything but delightful; and made hokey pokey that just tasted of bicarbonate of soda and made you foam at the mouth a bit! 

Then there are simple accidents, such as collapsing fridge shelves (I caught the just-setting trifle successfully) and the time I was up until midnight making jubilee cupcakes for school with triple coloured piped icing and they looked beautiful until I tried to move the cooling rack then... plop plop plop! they fell upside down, splatting their icing onto the table. I swore so loudly I woke the husband up, and he was upstairs!

The trouble is, I've shot myself in the foot with all this new recipe malarkey. The family now have such high standards it's quite difficult to serve up something run-of-the-mill, even on a weeknight.  I do have to go to work four days a week, I'm not home until 6.15pm and so I've had to become an expert on meals that are not only interesting but quick too, or we get hungry, and when we get hungry in our family, we tend to get short-tempered too.  And vegtarian on a Sunday didn't go down too well, in fact it was "unacceptable" a few years ago, but I'm working on that one...

Generally though, things do turn out remarkably well!

Thank you for reading, Caroline x

Tales of cheese and chocolate.

This blog post is not so much about culinary creations as culinary experiences.  What do you think of when you think of Switzerland?  Fresh air, mountains, army knives, banking or designer watches?  My first thoughts are of cheese and chocolate, and I was really looking forward to my first visit...

I had not been abroad for eight years (the last time was my honeymoon) when my friend invited me to Switzerland for her wedding. I was keen to find out more about food and drink in this beautiful country.  On the day I arrived in the village of Moiry, in the canton of Vaud,  there was a  houseful of guests.  Family and friends came and went all day long, enjoying pizza, pasta, salad, Swiss wine, coffee, chocolates, chat and each other’s company. We also enjoyed sachertorte brought back by my friend from a recent visit to Vienna. I really enjoyed the wine and wondered why I had never had Swiss wine before.  On doing some research, only 2% of it is exported, I think they like to keep it all for themselves, it was certainly very delicious.

The following morning,  we breakfasted on fresh bread with jams and marmalade, fruit juice and lovely coffee.  I’m usually a tea person in the mornings but decided to embrace change, as I was feeling very continental, I was told the Swiss only drink tea if they are ill.  After helping with preparations for my friend’s civil ceremony (a small family only event), and lunching on leftovers, the wedding party departed and I was left to my own devices for the rest of the day with another friend who was staying at the house but also not going to the civil ceremony.  

We borrowed bikes and headed for La Sarraz, two villages away and where we had got off the train the day before, on a mission to buy mint for the Pimm’s to be served at the big wedding party the following day.  After a stroll round the Co-op,  we found the mint (the last pack available) and picked up some fish and vegetables for dinner later.  Chocolate for my children was also purchased, as I’d promised to bring them some back.  I took a photo of some strangely dyed eggs, which I think were pre-hardboiled. The bike ride back to Moiry was uphill all the way, the sun had come out with a vengeance and we certainly broke out into a sweat, but made it back easily – passing cows with bells, goats and even some nuns en route.

After some chill-out time, and a walk through the village and into the forest, we returned to cook dinner.  The fish we had bought was pangasius, which I hadn’t heard of before.  I googled it and wished I hadn’t as there are some very scaremongering websites claiming it is unsustainable and could even make you ill due to dodgy aquaculture practices.  After some research I decided the good reviews outweighed the bad, and pan fried it with dill and served it on a bed of ribboned courettes and carrots with cherry tomatoes, accompanied by crusty bread.  I would say it wasn’t the tastiest fish in the world and I probably wouldn’t buy it again but it was ok, and we didn’t have any ill effects.

On Saturday morning we were up quite early as preparations had to be made for the big wedding party to be held at a Chalet, about forty minutes’ drive away, higher up in the mountains.  The wedding ceremony was to be held in a clearing in the pastureland, in a home-made “church” with the “aisle” and seating made out of hay and hay bales, and at the front an archway of pieces of wood, decorated with flowers.  The reception meal and party was to be held in a (very clean) barn area, which was also decorated.

When all was as it should be we had some lunch before it was time to get changed.  I had a “croque” of ham on bread with mustard, covered with melted cheese and what looked like paprika on the top.  I was informed that often the bread is quite stale so they soak it in wine first, although they hadn’t this time.  It was accompanied by gherkins and small pickled onions, which later I found to be a common accompaniment to savoury food, and very delicious.  I love gherkins! After this we went to a small hotel about ten minutes’ drive away where I would be staying overnight to get changed, and returned to the chalet for the ceremony and reception.

The ceremony was very unusual, combining a rock & roll theme with music, poetry and readings in both French and English (this was the French-speaking part of Switzerland).  It included what was what was termed the wine ceremony.  The guests had each written on a card a good wish for the happy couple and the two youngest bridesmaids collected these in a basket while music played.  The cards were sealed up in a wooden box containing a large bottle of red wine, the idea being that in five years’ time all would be invited back to drink the wine while the couple read the messages from their wedding day.  At this point the bride and groom drank wine out of two large trophies, which were then offered to the rest of the adult congregation as more music played. Next came the exchange of vows and rings, and they were declared married!  The bride and groom walked back up the aisle together to the strains of “You are the one for me, for me, for me, formidable” by Charles Aznavour. 

Afterwards there was photography (brief) and then the guests headed off to the chalet for aperitifs of Pimm’s or Swiss wine, accompanied by bread, breasaola (Italian air dried salted beef) and the usual gherkins and pickled onions.   When it was time to eat, each guest picked out their name card, which were pegged to string outside the barn and matched it to their place inside.  I was on the Jimi Hendrix table, with lots of people I knew and some I had just met.  Wine and conversation flowed, and as we waited for the starter there was a game of “Mr & Mrs” where the newlyweds sat on high stools at the front with placards with “ME/MOI” and “HIM/HER” on them, when asked questions by the guests they used the placards to display their answers, to much hilarity! Sugar cubes were also distributed to the guests, with a piece of coloured paper on which to write a message to the newly married couple, and some ribbon.  Each guest wrapped their sugar cube in their message and tied the ribbon round to make a tiny “present”.  The next day these were presented to the couple in a tin to take home, the idea being that every time they had sugar in their coffee they would find a message.

 

The starter was a salad buffet, with green leaves, assorted shredded cabbage and carrot salad with a choice of three dressings.  Each table was called to the buffet in turn when a song by the rock band of their table was played.  The main course was served to the table.  Roast pork with a delicious gravy reminiscent of the IKEA meatball gravy only much, much nicer; accompanied by garden vegetables and a creamy potato bake.  After all had eaten, a second helping was offered.  Before dessert, speeches were made by bride, groom, and bride’s father, some in both languages and some in just French. Dessert was meringues with fruit and double cream, and very scrumptious.  Before, during and after dessert, a live band played, a disco followed and there was much dancing and general merriment into the early hours.

The next morning I woke at 9.15am and after a quick wash and brush up, checked out of the hotel and went back to the chalet for breakfast, which was almost over but not quite!  Coffee, bread, two cheeses (gruyere and a creamy brie-like cheese), and jam were enjoyed al fresco.  After the clearing up was completed and some goodbyes had been said to those who were heading for home, we returned to Moiry for a restful day as some of us felt a little delicate!

We had a late lunch (cooked by my friend) of pasta with a creamy sauce of onions, bacon and gruyere, known as macaroni cheese d’alpage (only it was rigatoni!) but affectionately known to the family as “stinky pasta”!! Most of the day was spent sitting on the sunny balcony with coffee and little chocolates, or napping and the evening meal was a simple affair of bread, cheese (including a fabulous soft cheese with walnuts) and Swiss red wine.  I was also offered a sneaky meringue with cream as my friend began preparations for the next day’s dessert, a tart made with raisinee a “vin cuit” or cooked wine.  She explained to me what raisinee is, here is an explanation I found on the internet:

The “vin cuit” is a kind of very thick syrup, made out of fallen apples and/or pears that cannot be sold or eaten raw…  A second-life is given to them: they are crushed, so that their juice is extracted. This juice is then cooked for so long that it reduces and becomes thick and syrupy, like a kind of molasses.  To produce 1 kilo of raisinée, at least 10 kilos of juice is needed. The mixture has to be stirred carefully in a cauldron with a wooden spoon, over an open wood fire and it should not be left unattended because when overcooked the juice becomes bitter.

I was told that it needs to be stirred for twenty four hours and that villagers would take turns to stir it through the night. An early night followed, as tomorrow I was to be introduced to the delights of raclette!  Something I had heard about and eagerly anticipated…

I was up quite early and after a breakfast of hazelnut yoghurt, bread and jam with coffee, I helped with the preparations for the raclette party and barbecue that was to happen at lunchtime, thirty adults and many children had been invited, so there was much to do.  The garden was decorated with lanterns and the wedding flowers, bunting and table decorations, triangular sun canopies were put up to give some shade to the three large tables with benches either side,  and the tarte raisinee and a tarte a la crème were cooked.  Drinks were organised – Swiss beer, Swiss wine, coffee and Pimm’s for the grown-ups and iced tea and sprite for the children (the sprite was cooled in the “fountain” – which was really the cow watering trough just across the road), plus lots of water as it was quite a hot and sunny day. Crisps and snacks were put on the table; there was a sort of savoury croissant-like pastry stuffed with minced meat, and a baguette stuffed with a mixture of egg, ham and gherkins.  Many people brought assorted salads and the kitchen resembled a patisserie as there were SIX tartes of various kinds and two kinds of homemade biscuits (some tasted like they had caraway seeds in and the others were light and melt-in-the-mouth, a bit like trifle sponges only nicer).

In the corner of the garden there was a round table with the raclette “apparatus” on it.  Raclette is both the name of the cheese and the dish with which it is made.  The whole cheeses are about 6kg in weight and nearly one and a half of these were consumed at the party.  “Racler” means “to scrape” and the aim of the apparatus is to heat the cut surface of the cheese, melting it so that it can be scraped off and eaten with a variety of things, traditionally boiled potatoes and the now very familiar pickled onions and gherkins.  Raclette was one of those foods that I ended up having to eat with my eyes shut to fully appreciate the flavour! Each of the three half cheeses at the party had a subtly different flavour, and all were completely and utterly delicious.  There was a long queue and two men had the full time job of serving the raclette, although they were relieved later so that they could eat some.

There was also a barbecue happening at the same time, with the smell of sizzling marinated pork steaks and Swiss sausages floating through the air mingled with the smell of the cooking cheese.  The pork was very tasty, and so were the sausages.  There were two sorts, a white fat sausage called Kalbsbratwurst and another longer, thinner spicier one reminiscent of chorizo.  I only had a small piece of each though as I had to save room for the tartes.

There were two tartes a la crème, one made by my friend with puff pastry, and a similar one made by someone else with short pastry.  There was the tarte raisinee, a linzertorte (with jam and a sponge like base), an apricot tart and one made with hazelnuts drizzled with icing. I had to try a little piece of each for research purposes!  The tarte raisinee and the puff pastry tarte a la crème were the winners in my book, but all were delicious.

All too soon it was time to say goodbye, leave the party and leave Switzerland.  I was sad to go but really looking forward to seeing my family again.  The journey to the airport was easy, we arrived in plenty of time to buy large amounts of chocolate to take home to my friends and family, and get ideas for future macaroon flavours from a shop at the airport.  All went smoothly, we took off early, and I said goodbye to Geneva, looking out of the plane window as the lights twinkled in the darkness like diamonds on a Swiss watch.

During my time in Switzerland I met lots of new people from all over the world and enjoyed talking to them about their food experiences and their likes and dislikes.  I always find that even if people don’t like to cook, they usually have an opinion on food and cooking which makes for good conversation. And plenty of food and drink also makes for a great wedding!

So - what do I love about Switzerland?  Fresh air, cleanliness and lack of litter, friendliness of local people, the food (especially the cheese) and the wine.  The few minus points I could come up with are that everything is very expensive; and the noise of the cow bells does get to you after a while… every cow has a bell, and there are a lot of cows…

I'm planning to make a Swiss roll this weekend, and I wondered if Swiss rolls actually have anything to do with Switzerland.  It turns out that the origins of the term Swiss roll are unclear and the cake originated in Central Europe, but not in Switzerland as the name would suggest.  So now you know.

Thank you for reading,  Caroline x