1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (85 page)

6.
When all cookies are fried and cooled, store them in a tightly covered canister into which you have punched a few holes. Sprinkle the cookies with confectioners’ sugar just before serving.

Tip:
The flavor of the cookies improves enormously after 24 hours, and those with unusual willpower consider 1 week the proper maturing time. They will keep for 2 weeks in a cool spot.
See also:
Weihnachtsgebäck
;
The French Cookie Jar
.

A circular spruce box adds flavor and keeps the cheese’s shape.

A large, flat white disk, very thick, often slightly askew, with a sunken, patinaed rind. Within, a heavy, slowly runny liquid satin cream. This is Vacherin du Mont d’Or, the cow’s milk cheese with an incomparably salty-sweet, nutty flavor.

Its ascendance to the state of cheese perfection has been the subject of some discord between the countries of Switzerland and France. For most of its more than two-hundred-year history, the name Vacherin du Mont d’Or designated several cheeses made in the Jura mountains just north of the Alps, in both Switzerland’s Vaud canton and the neighboring Franche-Comté region of France. Relations between cheese makers were reportedly quite amicable, even though many experts cited the Swiss creation as slightly superior. The Swiss apparently agreed, and in 1981 they acquired the exclusive legal right to the name; the French product now has to be referred to as Vacherin du Haut-Doubs. Both have been awarded the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, the prestigious certification that lends official geographical designation status to certain precious wines, cheeses, and other foods.

In both regions, the remarkable cheeses are made according to strict, time-honored standards. The raw milk can come only from the cows of the Montbéliard and Simmentaler breeds. The cheese must be shaped into a round within a ring of spruce bark and be ripened on a spruce wood board. The process takes at least three weeks, and the cheeses must be rotated several times before being placed in the characteristic paper-thin bandbox of spruce.

Vacherin du Mont D’Or is produced only between September and the end of March, and the ivory-hued wonder is runniest and richest when perfectly, luxuriously ripe. To try it at its best, serve it at room temperature straight from the wooden box, with a spoon. You will need a cut of crusty bread and if you can find one, a ripe winter pear.

Retail and mail order:
In New York
, Murray’s Cheese, tel 888-692-4339,
murrayscheese.com
; Fairway, at multiple locations,
fairwaymarkets.com
.
Further information:
Cheese Primer
by Steven Jenkins (1996);
vacherin-montdor.ch
.
Special event:
Fête du Vacherin, Les Charbonnières, Switzerland, September,
vacherin-montdor.ch/en/news/fete-du-vacherin
.
Tip:
Because the original cheese must be made from raw milk and is aged for less than sixty days, the version available on American shores is pasteurized and often referred to as Vacherin du Jura.

Layers of nut-meringue, sponge cake, and buttercream.

Pastry chefs in Switzerland practice a fine art, and a sweet and creamy example of their skills lies in the Zuger kirschtorte. The lusciously rich layer cake is the specialty of Zug, the Swiss canton known for its kirsch—a clear and fiery cherry brandy distilled from the fruit grown in its orchards.

Many old recipes describe this torte as a simple sponge cake devoid of any hint of cherries, leaving the origin of the kirsch in its name a mystery. Other recipes call for kirsch in the batter as a flavoring, with a final anointing to moisten the finished cake while it is still warm. The most delectably elaborate is the version prepared by the talented Swiss pastry chef Albert Kumin, a delight created for the original menu of the Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

The seductively complex masterpiece begins with rounds of crisp and snowy hazelnut-crunchy Swiss meringue alternating with soft, fluffy layers of the lightest, sunniest génoise (the gentle sponge cake so beloved in Europe). The layers are bound by a vanilla-and kirsch-perfumed, pink-tinted buttercream that also is spread over the top and sides of the fully assembled cake. The cake is then sprinkled liberally with chopped hazelnuts and chilled for two to three hours so that hints of kirsch and vanilla seep through its layers. Just before being served, it is showered with confectioners’ sugar. As you might imagine, there’s reward to be found here not only in the flavor but also in the intriguing contrast of crisp, soft, and chewy layers, and the crackle of hazelnuts in every bite.

The snowy meringue defined as Swiss, by the way, differs from a standard French meringue in that the egg whites and sugar are gently beaten in a double boiler until the sugar is dissolved, then are removed from the heat and beaten vigorously to attain full volume. (In French meringue, sugar is added to egg whites and beaten until they form soft peaks.)

Where:
In Zurich
, Kronenhalle, tel 41/44-262-9900,
kronenhalle.ch
;
in Zug, Switzerland
, Confiserie Albert Meier, tel 41/41-711-1049;
in Springfield and Burke, VA
, The Swiss Bakery and Pastry Shop,
theswissbakeryonline.com
.
Further information and recipes:
A Quintet of Cuisines
by Michael and Frances Field (1970);
nickmalgieri.com
(search zuger kirschtorte);
food.com
(search swiss zug cherry torte).

An elusive treasure.

Imagine raspberries with the oozy soft richness and golden color of honey, and you’ll have an idea of what cloudberries are all about. A summer favorite in many countries neighboring Nordic regions, as well as Canada, Alaska, and the northernmost states in the lower forty-eight,
Rubus chamaemorus
is most common in Norway and Finland, where it is known as
hilla, lakka
, and
suomuurain.
(Neighboring Swedes call it
hjortron.
)

The teasingly tart, very soft berries do not keep well, so they are rarely exported fresh. But they do lend themselves to luscious jams and syrups, giving a year-round lift to pies, liqueurs, toasted bread, cream-filled crêpes, waffles, and ice creams. Cloudberries also serve as an elegant garnish for roast pork and duck, and as a coolly astringent accent to the lusty Finnish cheese
leipäjuusto
.

Though cherished for their color and for uniquely sweet-sharp, winey flavor, cloudberries are also valued in northern climes for their exceptional vitamin C content. So valued, in fact, that in 2005 a bumper crop ten times larger than usual prompted thousands of Finns and Estonians to travel to Lapland’s swamps, defying black flies to harvest their share, whether to eat it themselves or to sell it.

Mail order:
igourmet.com
(search cloudberry preserves);
scandinavianbutik.com
(click Food, then search cloudberry).
Further information and recipes:
The Scandinavian Kitchen
by Camilla Plum (2011);
swedishfood.com
(search hjortronglass).
Special event:
Cloudberry Festival, Vuollerim, Sweden, August,
laplandvuollerim.se/en
(click Events, then Cloudberry Festival).

To experience the clean, fresh flavors of Scandinavian cuisine, all you need to do is taste a few wisps of feathery dill. Follow that delicate starter by gnawing on some silvery caraway seeds. An exaggeration, to be sure, but one that’s not so far afield. While these seasonings appear in other European and Middle Eastern cuisines, nowhere are they more central to the taste paradigm as in Scandinavia.

Dill, with its silky, feathery fronds, tiny flowers, and slim yellow-green seeds, is a multipurpose wonder used as a seasoning and in all manner of curing and pickling. It may well have
palliative effects, to boot—its name derives from the Norse word
dilla
, to lull, and in some cultures it was steeped in water and used to calm crying babies and adult cramps. Its botanical alias,
Anethum graveolens
, lends both etymological roots and a clean, bright flavor to gravad lax or gravlax (see
listing
), the fresh-cured salmon preserved with salt, sugar, and pepper in addition to the leaves and dried seeds of dill.

Fresh air and spring green might be the best descriptions of the slightly sweet, grassy taste of dill’s fronds—pleasing, if elusive—while its seeds, used for pickling, have more pungency.

When buying dill, look for sprays that are sprightly and light green, and bypass those that are wilting or have any trace of the dark green, wet look that is an indicator of rotting. Keep them well wrapped in the salad compartment of the refrigerator, and discard them if they darken, or when their aroma becomes overpowering. When possible, buy freshly grown local dill, available in many farmers’ markets. It will be more tender and delicate than the tougher, stronger-flavored commercial product. You can also grow your own from seeds; it will flourish outdoors in a temperate climate.

Dill seed sold for seasoning appears in two forms. In midsummer—around late July and August—when the herb goes to seed, it flowers into big sprays tipped by the tiny yellow seeds and is sold in bunches. The seed is also available dried, for year-round use and in instances where greater flavor intensity is desired. As with all dried seeds, be on the lookout for rancidity—difficult if you buy it untried in bottles, but simple if it’s sold in bulk at a spice store. Just bite into a few seeds, and if the taste is musty and bitter, move along. Store dried dill seeds in the refrigerator.