I’ve cooked quite a few recipes from Helvetic Kitchen over the past 4 years.
Toétché caught my eye
I’ve cooked quite a few recipes from Helvetic Kitchen over the past 4 years.
Toétché caught my eye
My brother-in-law is Swiss and gave me a cookbook which is very nice to browse through but I must admit I haven’t made any of the recipes yet.
When I go to visit them, I also look through their Betty Bossi cookbook which they have at home and took some photos of the recipes which appealed to me. I used to think Betty Bossi was the Swiss equivalent of Delia Smith or Madhur Jaffery and then I discovered she is the Swiss equivalent of Betty Crocker (literally), a figment of corporate imagination. What a disappointment. The recipes still appeal though…
The Gateau du Vully is the yeast cake. I haven’t made it myself but I do get it from the local bakery when I visit Switzerland. It’s lovely.
I’m not sure where the last recipe for apple cake is from. Some Swiss cookbook that didn’t have English translation!
Partially Mexican, part Swiss, Swiss enchiladas are something my family has loved since my kids were little. Easy to make and delish.
I don’t think enchiladas suizas have anything to actually do with Switzerland, do they?
The Mexican food I had in Austria was something else.
A Swiss chef relocated to Mexico, I think, where he came up with the dairy rich enchilada Suiza.
Curious, what kind of MX chow you get in Switzerland?
I haven’t had any Mexican food in Switzerland. It’s probably decent in Geneva, because of the UN.
The bar I visited in St Anton, Austria serves Tex Mex nachos and tacos, that don’t quite taste Tex Mex.
The Suizas probably just refers to the dairy in the sauce.
I think Sunset Magazine’s Mexican Cooking cookbook had some enchiladas made with swiss cheese.
Swiss food tends to be quite bland. All the Swiss people I know (which is quite a few) are not big fans of spicy food. The younger generation are a bit more open to trying spicy food. Any food from countries known for ‘hot spicy’ food (eg. India, Thailand) that I’ve tried in restaurants in Switzerland is toned down a lot to cater to the local population. My sister lives in a relatively small Swiss town and cannot even get any nice hot sauces in the local supermarkets and there isn’t a good shop catering to Asian/African/South American expats. So I actually send her packages of hot sauces from the UK occasionally as she loves eating spicy food.
Bottom line: Maximilian Habsburg (la-to-dah royalty) comes to Mexico and chefs hope to impress him, so they go with North European creampiness. Then a guy named Walter Sanborn bought a resto in MX D.F. tried the dish and called in Swiss Enchiladas because of the dairy.
Flash forward: I love these.
We had a very lively discussion about spicy cuisines here in the past. Sadly, it got locked. You should check it out
I’m a big fan of Enchiladas Suizas, which are hard to find in Canada.
Interesting! I remember another thread on ‘ethnic’ grocery stores that got locked. In my post above I had to consciously avoid the term ethnic to describe shops catering to expats!
Even though it’s not to do with recipes, I’d like to give a big shout out to Swiss wines. They are often excellent, and very hard to find outside of Switzerland. I think their wine production is quite small and they hardly export any, just keep it all to themselves!
That’s so interesting! I don’t think I ever had Swiss wine — Austrian & German for sure.
Do they have any local grapes you like in particular, or wines you really liked?
I attended a conference in Montreux where they did a little welcome from some local officials and a reception where they served one red and white wine each from the local region - Lavaux, if I remember correctly. I preferred the white, but it might have been because it was summer! Otherwise I just drink what my brother-in-law picks up from the supermarket! When we were browsing the local fancy supermarket there were quite a few bottles which caught our eye but we only had hand luggage so couldn’t take any back home. Maybe one day I’ll be organised enough to bring a check-in case with lots of bubble wrap to take some bottles back home!
I’ll have to look out for Swiss wines when I’m back in the homeland next summer
That’s a good idea. Interestingly, the Swiss relatives regularly hop across the border into Germany to buy appliances as they feel it’s a lot cheaper. My sister spends the day in Basel with the kids while her husband drives into Germany to browse electric/electronic goods, which she finds super boring.
Yeah, Switzerland is $$$.
My relatives in Basel and Zurich always vacation in Austria, Germany or Italy, because their money goes so much further.
Again, not really recipes, but a nice way to get some real Swiss food relatively cheaply in Switzerland is to do a judicious supermarket trip. Migros is a supermarket chain which is good quality and reasonably priced compared to Coop, which is the other major Swiss supermarket. I buy sealed packs of rösti, Gruyere and other Swiss cheeses (Tete de Moine seems expensive and I always worry that buying ready shaved cheese means it will be dry and I don’t have a cheese gadget just to get cheese into pretty curls - so I’ve never indulged in Tete de Moine even though it looks so tempting), Swiss crackers, cookies and cakes, chocolate, charcuterie, etc. Good for picnics and hotel room meals and also nice to bring the less perishable items back home in luggage. We were alarmed when we nearly had 8 sealed packs of rösti confiscated at Geneva airport security because for some reason they kept telling us it was a liquid! My appalling French didn’t help matters but eventually a supervisor came and inspected the packs and let them through - phew!