Dairy

101/365: National Cheese Fondue Day

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Midwest Mark

I’ll spear you the suspense and get right to the point: April 11th is National Cheese Fondue Day!

Fondue originated in Switzerland as a method of using up hard cheese. One can only have so many paperweights, you know? It comes from the French word fondre, which means “to melt.” OK, logical enough. It was a traditional peasant dish, made with white wine and served in a communal pot; stale bread is most often used for dipping. Stale bread and old, hard cheese, eh? Those Swiss really knew hot to stretch leftovers. Fondue really took off in the 1950s when Konrad Egli introduced it at his Chalet Suisse restaurant in New York. We’ve discussed him before; he’s the dude who invented chocolate fondue as a promotion for Toblerone. Before long, every bell-bottom and polyester-clad cook in the 1970s was serving fondue; it’s as much a symbol of that decade as disco, Watergate, and Farrah Fawcett. It remains popular in Switzerland, too, where it is a symbol of Swiss unity; the Swiss Cheese Union promotes it aggressively with marketing campaigns featuring slogans like Fondue isch guet und git e gueti Luune – “fondue is good and creates a good mood.”

I happen to agree. Fondue IS good and it DOES create a good mood. Tara and I met for lunch at Gustav’s, a German restaurant down the street, midway between where we both work. It doesn’t get more convenient than that. This is the second food holiday we have celebrated here; we also had the fondue for National Cheese Lover’s Day. What can I say? Their fondue is really good! And I’m thinking Tara and I need to break down and buy our own fondue set already. Hey…maybe we’ll get one as a wedding gift!

When the check arrived, I asked our waiter if he knew it was National Cheese Fondue Day, and he had no idea. Then he said, “The cheese fondue is our most popular dish…this would be a great marketing idea!”

Yeah. No kidding. It still amazes me how rarely people in the food business realize when there’s a food holiday celebrating a dish they are known for. Talk about a lot of missed marketing opportunities. Maybe I should consider becoming a food consultant or something…

Cheese Fondue

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20/365: National Cheese Lover’s Day*

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Midwest Mark

January 20th is a trifecta of food holidays: buttercrunch, granola bars, and cheese are all celebrated. With so many sweets being honored this week (and, well, always), we didn’t want to tackle buttercrunch. For the record, it’s a toffee-like candy similar to Almond Roca or peanut brittle. Shout out to buttercrunch! And unwrapping a granola bar seemed too easy. I eat granola bars at least once a week for breakfast. Cheers to the granola bar, but today is not your day to shine. Since Tara and I are both cheese lovers, we’re celebrating in the cheesiest way imaginable.

Fondue.

But more on that in a sec…

Cheese dates back to prerecorded history, and was discovered by accident. Ancient folk seldom got together for Tupperware parties, so they used animal skins and internal organs to store their food. It is believed that an Arab trader stored milk in an animal’s stomach. The rennet from the stomach turned the milk to curds and whey. No, the trader’s name was not Little Miss Muffet. Hieroglyphics in Egyptian tombs dating back to 2000 B.C. depict cheese making, and Homer describes the Cyclops as being a skilled cheese artisan in his epic Odyssey (“We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock of all that we could see. His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses…”). When even a one-eyed mythological giant digs cheese, you know its popularity is going to explode, and sure enough cheese became a staple throughout Europe and the Middle East. Not so much in Asia, which is why you never see cheese on Chinese menus, but they’ve perfected moo goo gai pan so it’s all a wash anyway.

Cheese is often condemned as being unhealthy and leading to heart disease, but some of the countries best-known for cheesy diets – Greece and France – have low incidences of cardiovascular disease, so the jury is out on that one. It’s okay to love cheese! (Except for Velveeta and Cheez Wiz. Neither one of which is real cheese anyway).

There were dozens of ways we could have celebrated this holiday – mac ‘n cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, cheese omelets, tacos – and hundreds of varieties to choose from (cheddar, muenster, jack, parmesan, string). Narrowing our options down was tough, but we decided to leave the cooking to Gustav’s, a German restaurant known for their cheese fondue. Theirs is made with swiss, and is amazing. Holes and all.

Cheese Fondue

Hot, bubbly, cheesy goodness.

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