celebrating Bastille Day...with a Swiss cheese???

Today is Bastille Day, so we incorporated some French elements (well, European at least) into our day.  I was really tired this morning, so tired in fact that I didn't feel like wasting time (or calories) on a latte, and instead opted for a single shot of espresso.  For dinner, we had egg sandwiches on French rolls, and for dessert, I made my first attempt at crepes (I've been dying to try out the rateau I bought at the Le Creuset outlet store on our vacation in Destin.  I will not discuss how excited I was to find this $3 dowel utensil in the store).  So what did any of this have to do with cheese?  Well, a few days ago, needing a new cheese to try, I purchased Emmentaler.  My cheese book suggested that it was a perfect cheese for a Croque Monsieur.  Lacking ingredients, we improvised with a pseudo-Croque Madame, scrambling eggs with spinach and melting shredded Emmentaler on top.  

Emmentaler is a cheese familiar to many.  It dates back to 1293, though it was not mentioned by name until almost 300 years later in 1542.  It's a Swiss cow's milk cheese, classified as a hard cheese, and aged anywhere between 4-18 months.  A single hoop of this cheese, which weighs 165-200 lbs, requires 265 gallons of milk.  The one I tried claimed to have been aged over 100 days.  The flavor was lovely, like Alpine meadows of warm grass and wildflowers, butter and a hint of nuttiness.  The texture was also very interesting.  At room temperature, it was soft and elastic, and then it melted beautifully for our sandwiches, becoming more stretchy without breaking down at all.  The cheese paired nicely with a glass of Riesling. 

fondue

For some crazy reason, I wanted to try the French-themed fondue featured at the Melting Pot before they took it off their menu. So the last Sunday in March, my husband and I set off to experience Fondue a la France. Several years ago, we had done their full four-course menu, and decided it was just way too much food.  This time, we were limiting it to cheese, salad, and dessert (a near-perfect meal in my opinion).

We ordered the featured fondue, which included Baby Brie (France), Fontina (Italy), Gruyere (Switzerland) and Raclette (France), all melted together with Nueske's bacon, onions, white truffle cream and chives.  It was very cheesy and flavorful, and every so often, I'd get a delicious little piece of the slightly more pungeant Brie that hadn't melted completely. They served it with several types of bread (white, wheat and rosemary I believe), raw veggies (broccoli, cauliflower and carrots) and green apple chunks for dipping.  We really enjoyed it, but I concluded that when it comes to cheese, if I'm trying to experience new cheeses and flavors, that fondue is not my preferred method. Don't get me wrong - melty cheese is not a bad thing, but several melted together makes it difficult to discern the unique characteristics of each.  

The Nicoise salad (haricots verts, tomatoes, hard boiled egg, Nicoise olives with shallot vinaigrette) was very pretty and provided an opportunity for me to try beets (verdict: not bad - at least these since they were very finely shredded). And finally the White Chocolate Creme Brulee (with caramelized sugar shards!) was delicious and happiness-inducing.