Hi all, since we are half Swiss, one of our favorite meals to make and eat is cheese fondue, and it’s super easy.  Over MLK weekend we went skiing and what better cold weather/ski meal is there than cheese fondue? We also roasted some vegetables for Mom (she’s not Swiss so she doesn’t love cheese as much as we do).

The first step was to set the table with our Swiss napkins and placemats.  Then we grated a lot of gruyere and cut up a baguette into chunks.  Sometimes we use half gruyere cheese and half vacherin (that is called moitie-moitie…or half-half, but we didn’t have vacherin.)

Then we cut a piece of garlic in half and ran it around the inside of our swiss pot (called a caquelon) and we added the cheese (and a little white wine) and stirred constantly.  (We also chopped the veggies and put them in the oven with a little olive oil.)  When the cheese was completely melted and at the right gooey consistency, we transferred the pot to our fondue stand with a little heater underneath and enjoyed!  You don’t want the cheese to burn but you do want it liquid. Dad (who is Swiss) particularly likes the crust at the bottom of the caquelon…sort of like a cheesey cracker.  It’s called “la religieuse”, which means nun in french and none of us could figure out why.