We just spent the last four days in Lugano, Switzerland, exploring the city, visiting Lake Como in Italy, doing some hiking and eating a lot of great Swiss food that was really what we think of as Italian food.

It’s so amazing that you can drive three hours from Zurich in Switzerland (where everyone speaks German and the food is more robust, Germanic) to Lugano (where everyone speaks Italian and you can get great pizza, pasta, risotto and polenta) AND still be in the same country.

We loved Lugano. It’s a beautiful city with amazing food. Our two favorite restaurants were Cafe Argentina and La Tinera. Cafe Argentina is in the main square and is more casual with great pizza, pasta and salads. (We went there three of the four nights). Our favorites were the Estate pizza and the Cafe Argentina salad. Other great options were pasta bolognese and breaded chicken cutlet with fries:

Estate pizza: fresh tomatoes, arugula, fresh mozarella, parmesano cheese

Salad Argentina

The other restaurant, La Tinera, is a little more special. It specializes in cuisine from Ticino, which is also very much what we think of as Italian, but more on the Northern Italian side: polenta, risotto…. It is also a cool space, downstairs from the main square. It is not only downstairs but surrounded by huge wine barrels and racks of wine. It also serves as a more traditional type of restaurant instead of just pizza and pasta. The place seemed VERY authentic, a true hidden gem. It seemed as if most of the crowd was local, a good sign at any restaurant. We ordered polenta with fried eggs, risotto with mushrooms, pork cutlet with spaghetti and fresh raviolis. Everything was delicious but really the polenta with fried eggs was the best.

Polenta with fried eggs

Risotto with mushrooms

Mom and Dad also said the wine was really good (Alex had a sip or two:) and reasonable and they served it in traditional ceramic jars.

Today our parents picked us up from two weeks of Swiss Camp. (We were with about 40 other kids who, like us, are Swiss citizens who live outside of the US.) After an afternoon of hiking outside of Zurich, we were ready for a hearty Swiss meal. And we found it at Restaurant Swiss Chuchi! Here you can find all the traditional Swiss food…what you think about when you are skiing in the Alps — like fondue and raclette and rosti. And even though its August, that’s what we wanted. We ordered a moiete-moiete fondue (half gruyere and half vacheron), raclette (with all the fixings, including our favorite…small boiled potatoes) and the best raclette rosti (potato pancake) we have ever eaten. Mom and Dad ordered fendant, the traditional white wine that you drink with fondue.

Fondue

Rosti

Raclette machine

We are actually in Switzerland and not able to do much cooking but mom sent us a picture of  some amazing pork that our friend Ed Kiel sent us.  Thank you so much Ed!!! We can’t wait to come home and cook it and we will be sure to write all about it.  We love pork–especially bacon (and this bacon looks amazing).  We’ll be back September 1: in the meantime stay cool and keep cooking.

Mom always warns us that if we over whip cream, it will turn into butter…and we never believed her.

So for an experiment, I (Max) tried to whip butter into cream. I poured about a cup of heavy cream in a bowl and started whipping. After about a minute it started getting chunky; at about two minutes a new thin white liquid (buttermilk) appeared along with chunks of yellow solids and by three minutes there was a soft but solid lump of butter in a pool of buttermilk. I rinsed the butter with cold water a couple of times and then did the taste test.

Yep it was butter…but VERY unsalted!  Mom was right…I guess moms do know best! (Mom made me write that:)

Watch the video here!