I woke up two Sundays ago with a strong desire to eat fondue. This would be the second time in my life that I actually let myself think about eating copious amounts of cheese, bread and processed meat- the first was almost nine years ago. This time around I think it was the weather that turned my head. Paris is cold, on most days we experience highs of up to 5C and lows as bad as -6 or -7C.
So, Sunday morning. In France. Where should we go eat some fondue? Most restaurants are closed, about 90%, and of the 10% left, most are only open in the evenings. Which left the string of restaurants along rue Mouffetard which someone described as using "low-grade cheese". Well if I am going to be ingesting fatty substances the least I could do is to make sure it is the good stuff. Since I preferred to eat badly for lunch rather than dinner, there was no other way but to make it ourselves.
I have saved in my hard disk a New York Times recipe from a few years back. Looking at it again, the instructions seemed easy enough, so we piled into the car to find some fondue fixings.
Rue Cler was open. Husband likes the cheeses at La Fermetta, their Comté is dreamy, anyway, he bought some gruyere and emmenthal. Then hopped across to Nicolas for a bottle of Chablis and one of Kirsch. I went to Franprix to get some corn starch, along with tortilla chips and festive pack of Ferrero Rocher put out along the cash register line to make people like me buy on impulse.
The proportions are roughly 225g of two types each of cheese to 1.5 tbsp cornstarch to 1 cup dry white wine. The cheese gets grated and mixed with the cornstarch. The quantity shown here is not exact, give or take 10 or 20g.
We also needed some other vehicular food to transport the cheesey sauce. I looked at what we had in the pantry. Pink Lady apples, sweet clementines, frankfurters, sliced bone-in-ham, colourful vegetables (sprinkled with water and microwaved on high for 1.5 + 1.5 minutes), cubes of 4 day old pain levain. All to be skewered on brand-new fondue forks.
I did not buy a fondue pot because who knows when the next time will be. I used the cast iron sukiyaki pot which turned out to be too wide and deep for the amount we made. Next time I'll probably use my cocotte.
Husband cooked the sauce. He cut a clove of garlic into two and rubbed them all over the halfway up the sides. The wine was added and brought to a simmer before stirring in the cheeses a handful at a time. At the end, he poured a glug of kirsch.
Keep the pot at a low simmer so the cheese stays melty and creamy not bubbling like lava. One cup of wine was too little, I would double that with confidence, in any case the cheese kind of seized up halfway through the meal, so we poured the Chablis we were drinking into the pot and stirred briskly which smoothened it out again.
The instructions also said to season with salt, pepper and nutmeg but we forgot and it was still fine. The sauce was delicious, boozy and cheesy and made everything taste good. We probably will do this all over again as it is quite uncomplicated and rather fun.
