Text 35012, 147 rader
Skriven 2016-01-11 03:04:10 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av JIM WELLER
Ärende: xmas 794
================
Nice! Though it takes a scorecard (perhaps a yearbook
as well) to keep track of all your relatives, with all
the steps and such.

Couple things that popped up.

Chili's chili - just say no. I've always despised the
chain since it took over the space where the estimable
Swiss Alps had been in Cambridge*. It was the first time 
I'd encountered the name (logo looks like Chiji's, which 
I've called it ever since). As I recall, I went to that 
location once out of curiosity and found it tolerable 
(just get a burger), not good enough to cancel my 
resentment. I've been to other iterations on rare 
occasions with friends with no taste buds (same with 
Applebee's, Friday's, and the worst of all, Ruby 
Tuesday's) and remember little, my rememberer having 
recently been reset, mercifully, to cancel all but the 
good and the worst.

* If you look this up on the Internet, you get citations
to a revival of the original place; they were not at all
the same thing.

Sour cream and dill - I disagree with that as well,
though you probably wouldn't object at my threshold 
concentration. I'm thinking that in a cow-heavy culture
maybe sour cream gets tiresome, and there are all these
lovely aromatic weeds growing around wild to toss in 
(just don't get the hemlock).

Turkeys - they are much better, aren't they. Possibly
even worth twice what the Eveready ones cost.

Airport food - everyone has to learn sometime. Goose
Island products are okay, though the big seller down
here is a wheat beer (competing with Blue Moon I
suppose - something that I'd hate even if it were good, 
which it's not, because Coors hounded my favorite
Boston-area microbrewery Brew Moon into an ignominious
death).

Croute au fromage
cat: lunch, cheap
servings: 1

French bread, about 4 slices
1 garlic clove
melted butter
1 oz ham, julienne
- sub thin-sliced mushrooms
2 oz Gruyere, shredded
parsley sprig

Rub bread on all sides with cut clove of garlic.
Cube into bite-size cubes and toss in melted
butter. Put in an ovenproof dish. Strew ham bits
over and shred cheese over that.

Bake in a hot oven until cheese melts.

Garnish with parsley if desired.

Serve with a glass of cheap white wine.

After Swiss Alps, Cambridge MA circa 1970-1980

==
Swiss Croutes/Tranches au fromage
cat: cheese, main
servings: 1

2 sl stale bread
2 sl cheese 5mm thick
1 Tb apple, quince, or cherry brandy
black pepper
1 clove garlic
a deep oven-proof plate

Cheese crust like in the Swiss Alps.

For each guest as a hearty main course.

Some cheeses melt better than others. You need a full
fat hard cheese, if possible unpasteurized, Swiss and
au lait d'alpage, milk of cows who pastured an Alpine
meadow rather than some crap in a barrel. There is a
world of difference in the resulting product, just
like for wine or tea.

To make a proper croute you need your bread to be as
dry as possible. Ideally use stale bread cut into
slices and left uncovered for a few days. Toast two
slices of bread or enough to cover the bottom of the
hollow oven-resistant plate you will present each of
your guests with. Swiss restaurants routinely toast
the bread directly on a live gas flame on their stoves,
and they always burn it. Nobody complains as it is
buried under the cheese but the bitter burnt bread
taste is perceivable. So toast it but don't burn it.

Cut the garlic clove in half lengthwise, remove the
inside stem, and scrape it against the bread. Garlic
lovers will be tempted to put a whole crushed garlic
clove into the croute, but the taste will be
overwhelming, you won't digest it so well, and after
an hour or so you'll be left alone in the room.

Sprinkle 1 Tb fruit brandy over the bread slices.
There is nowhere you can hide a poor ingredient in
such a simple dish. Use the best fruit brandy you
have, a distillation of fermented pears, cherries,
quince or apples. I used my bottle of President
Mobutu's quince brandy which I bought at his
house near Lausanne.

The right cheese for a successful croute should
melt nicely. The armailli's Gruyere was just right
- not too hard and packing a concentrate of the
alpine pasture's grass, herbs and flowers.
[M's note: I believe that armailli means cowherd.]

Cut the cheese in 5mm thick slices and remove the
crust. Some people would leave the crust after
scraping it but it's good only if you manage to
really roast it under a strong broiler, and that
is hard to achieve without splitting the cheese
into an oily mess.

Cover the bread slices with the cheese and melt in a
medium hot oven. Too hot or too long and your cheese
will split. Watch carefully, it should be ready in
5 min or so. When the cheese is fully melted take it
out and don't wait for oily flecks to appear.
 
Serve hot with a little crushed black pepper or
powdered white pepper. Do not drink anything but hot
tea or white wine with melted cheese or you'll be sick.
This applies also to fondue and raclette, two Swiss
dishes related to the croute au fromage.

Many people like to eat pickled onions or cucumbers
with Swiss cheese dishes.

Source: fxcuisine.com
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