Cheese fondue, really?

Cheese fondue seems kind of old-fashioned these days, something that was all the rage in the seventies. As a child, I didn't like cheese but I always fancied watching my parents and their friends sitting around a pot of molten cheese, dipping crusty white bread with long, slender, colorful forks.

The other reason I was intrigued by cheese fondue was a very popular comic book: Asterix in Switzerland. I hoped that my parents would enforce the character's obnoxious practices when someone dropped a bread cube in the pot. According to the story, at first offense, there would be five strokes with a cane, 2nd time around, twenty whippings, and at the 3rd wrongdoing, the offender would be drowned in Lake Geneva with weights attached to their feet. That sounded like great entertainment. But this never happened, and we didn't even live close to Lake Geneva.

Nowadays, disliking cheese is no longer an issue, so when we ran into our friends Ellen and John, and, inexplicably, the conversation turned to cheese fondue, we made plans to get together and give it a try. I had a recipe, they had the fondue pot, so one warm evening (so wrong for cheese fondue) we got together.

My recipe is different from the typical cheese fondue, leaving out the Kirsch and using champagne, chives and Dijon mustard. It seems lighter, but that's only an illusion. We are talking a lot of cheese here. I liked standing by the stove stirring the cheese with a wooden spoon in a figure eight until it became soft, then creamy and finally perfectly smooth. Throughout the house we smelled the sweet, nutty and earthy aroma of melted cheese with the perfume of alcohol. 

The Swiss recommend drinking warm tea, but we chose a crisp white wine. We dipped chunks of crusty baguette into the fondue which had specks of chives floating on top, and enjoyed a simple salad on the side. It was just like my childhood memory, except that no one dropped a piece of bread.

Cheese Fondue

Adapted from a cookbook found a long time ago in a beach house in Del Mar
serves 4

1 pound finely grated Swiss Cheese and Gruyere Cheese (any combination works), mixed with 4 teaspoons of flour

1 large clove garlic

2 tablespoons butter

1–1 ½ cups dry champagne

¼ cup finely chopped chives

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Pinch of salt and pepper, pinch of nutmeg

Cut garlic in half and rub the inside of the fondue pot, discard. Melt butter and add the cheese together with the champagne. Stir constantly until mixture is smooth, adding more champagne if needed. Fold in Dijon mustard and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Sprinkle with chives and serve.