Swiss – Audrey's 74

Birchermüesli

Giulia Doyle — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 23:07:04 +0000

Birchermüesli is hearty, nourishing and if prepared the night before a really quick breakfast. It’s readily available in Swiss bakeries and is often eaten on the go for lunch as well. There are many recipes out there, but the ones I am partial to are the overnight ones. Those few hours allow the flavours to soak into the oats and give the Birchermüesli a very specific consistency. The difference to oatmeal is that Birchermüesli doesn’t need any cooking and is served cold – definitely a plus for me.

Birchermüesli

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Yield: 2-4 servings

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of oats
3 tablespoons of granola (optional). I like the added crunch
1 apple, cored and sliced thinly, peel left on
Handful of grapes,cut in half
1/4 of golden raisins
1 heaping tablespoons of fruit greek yogurt (flavour of your choice)
3 heaping tablespoons of plain greek yogurt
2-3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon of chopped hazelnuts

Instructions

The night before, put the oats, granola, fruit, raisins and yogurt into a bowl or container. Combine well and add the orange juice in stages until everything is mixed well. Cover and pop into the fridge overnight. Sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts before serving.

Notes

You have a lot of options with flavours here. Add berries instead of grapes, a pear instead of apples, leave out the granola and add some pumpkin seeds. Add dried cranberries instead of raisins. Make it more decadent with a tablespoon of heavy cream. Top with sliced bananas if you want. Some places in Switzerland serve it topped with whipped cream.

/2015/03/26/birchermuesli/

My Salad Dressing two ways

Giulia Doyle — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 12:42:20 +0000

I learned to make salad dressing when I was 7 or 8 years old. An old aunt of ours taught me and had me make it every time we visited her house. It’s a basic dressing I think most Swiss kids learn how to make. Years later I still make this basic dressing, sometimes I switch out the components with the same proportions and get my second dressing. Lots of people like and comment on it when they have a salad at our house. It’s foolproof, it’s versatile and it’s a good one to know off the top of your head.

My salad dressing two ways

Ingredients

Version 1:
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon Mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Canola or Sunflower oil
1 tablespoon White wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs such as Italian or Provencal
Salt and pepper to taste
Version 2:
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon Mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Olive oil
1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
1 teaspoon Dried Italian herbs
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Combine all ingredients at the bottom of the salad bowl and stir vigorously until well combined. Add a splash of water if you want a thinner dressing. Alternatively, double or quadruple the recipe, add all components in a mason jar, tighten lid and shake vigorously until well combined. Use part of it for your salad and keep rest in fridge for future use. Keeps a couple of days.
Dressing 1 has a tart taste due to the white wine vinegar, Dressing 2 is a bit sweet and silkier due to the balsamic vinegar and the olive oil.

Notes

Once you master a basic dressing you can change things up as you wish. Try adding sour cream instead of mayonnaise, try a shallot infused oil, add fresh herbs in the summer, try buttermilk instead of mayonnaise, or add some feta to the balsamic dressing. The sky is the limit - just make sure you have a 2:1 ratio for your oil and vinegar.

/2015/03/18/my-salad-dressing-two-ways/

A trip to Switzerland Part 2

Giulia Doyle — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 13:06:36 +0000

I’m back with the second batch of my Switzerland photos! I still had trouble narrowing them down, so here’s another picture heavy post. On a particularly rainy day up in Flims, we decided to drive down into the valley to a small town called Maienfeld. I lived in Maienfeld for several years as a tween and teenager and it was very interesting to go back to the old stomping ground and show my kids where I went to school, the path I walked home, the small town square and expansive vineyards. Maienfeld is an odd little town. It’s the third city on the Rhein because it has remnants of the historic city wall. While it’s history shows it as an important city back in the day – the town hall, the castle and many historic buildings – it also has a farming community surrounding it. Both worlds seem to collide in one small place and you can find a majestic vineyard mansion and turn the corner and see a working farm next to the elementary school. Due to it’s favourable climate and south facing hills, Maienfeld is a large wine producing region in Switzerland. I remember enjoying wonderful fall weather, which would help the grapes ripen to their full potential. I also remember picking those sticky grapes, one of the toughest jobs I ever had. We only stayed in town for the afternoon, strolling from street to street and picking up some wine at my old winery. It was lovely to be back. Our last stop was Zurich. We stayed at my mom’s apartment and explored the city a little. We didn’t overdue it, just walked the streets one day and visited the zoo the next day. Other than that we met up with a few of my friends and spent some quality time together as a family. Probably the place I miss most in Switzerland is Zurich. It’s the city I spent part of my adult life in, where I got my first real job, my own apartment, where I have friends and an identity shaped outside of my family unit. It’s a really beautiful city and has so much to offer. My kids were fascinated by all the fountains they found on our trip through Switzerland. They took every opportunity to drink some water! This concludes our Swiss leg of our Europe trip. I’ll share photos from our visit to Spain soon. I really hope we manage to get back to Switzerland soon, we had the best time!

Photos by Giulia Doyle and Bruno Doyle

A trip to Switzerland Part 1

Giulia Doyle — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 13:30:41 +0000

This summer we decided to bite the bullet and pay for four plane tickets to Europe. Going back home to Switzerland was going to be a big focus of this trip. With our kids being dual citizens we want to make sure they get to know their far-away home a little while growing up – seeing places where their mom grew up, experiencing different foods, high mountains and a different language.

After our long flight to Zurich, we decided to jump straight into a rental car and drive to a small alpine village called Flims, about an hour and a half away from Zurich. It’s where my dad grew up and where I spent many winters and summers as a child. It’s small, quaint and a place many would call typically Swiss – with high mountains, cows and lot’s of cheese. Above images are around our rental apartment. Note the year on the first building!

On day one, my sister and her family came up to visit along with my mom. We decided to head up to a mountain valley called Bargis. It turned out it was quite a steep hike! What a way to kick that jet lag. Once we made it up we had a hearty meal and then cooled off in the freezing stream. The kids had a blast and were exhausted after a day in nature. Look at that sky…looks like it goes on forever.One of my favourite places is the Caumasee. It’s the most beautiful emerald coloured alpine lake. When I was 16, I had a summer job there selling swimming tickets and ice cream at the kiosk. The water is freezing cold, but it’s a great place to spend a summer day, ride a pedalo boat or enjoy the new kids playground. It’s an easy walk from the parking lot, so anybody can get there. The kids had a great time canon balling into the lake from that raft.While in the alps I wanted to enjoy more of the view from above. At first we wanted to go up to the glacier, but it turned out the gondola only runs on the weekends in the summer. Instead, we decided to take the chairlift to Foppa and then hike over to Fidaz. It’s a pretty flat hike, while it’s a bit long for our 5 year old, we did get the most beautiful view. Unfortunately the restaurant we were planning to eat lunch at was closed for renovations, so we had to hike a little further for sustenance ;).

Another place worth hiking to is Conn. You actually hike down, which doesn’t seem to make sense, and after you’ve hiked down for an hour or so, you end up at these crazy cliffs that go straight down to the Rhein gorge. It’s called the little grand canyon. There’s a really good restaurant there and there’s an observation deck that hangs over the gorge, in case you didn’t get scared enough of the height.While we were there, someone came for lunch with their helicopter. The kids and Bruno decided to take the horse drawn carriage back to the village, while my mom and I walked back with the dogs.

We had an amazing week in the alps. It was incredibly relaxing, the food was amazing, it was great to see old and familiar things and the weather was pretty good. Photos by Giulia Doyle and Bruno Doyle

I have a few more pictures to share with you in a separate post. I decided to split this trip into multiple posts since they are so picture heavy! So, stay tuned for more Switzerland photos and photos from Spain.

Easter Preparations and Zopf Bunnies

Giulia Doyle — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 13:30:06 +0000

We’ve been looking forward to Easter. It’s been a long wait and I think all of us need a couple of days off from our regular routine. I am really hoping we’ll be able to do the Easter Egg Hunt outdoors, so fingers crossed on our end.

In the meantime we made some bunny shaped Zopf, which is a Swiss sweet bread, very similar to Challah. It was a fun little project with the kids. I’m not an expert bread baker, so next time I think I’d be able to improve on some of my bunny shapes – but I thought I’d share it with you here, because they are kind of cute and very tasty.
We also decorated a bunch of eggs and I shared them last week on Clementine Daily. Instead of regular dye, we decided to use paint pens and temporary tattoos. I love how they turned out. We made a couple more with blown-out eggs so we could hang them on our forsythia branches. Even with coloured eggs, the paint pens and tattoos can add a little bit of extra decoration.

Bunny Bread (Zopf)

Ingredients

500 g flour
1.5 tablespoons of salt
2 tablespoons of sugar
60 g butter at room temperature
15 g instant yeast
3 dl milk (about 1.25 cups)
raisins
1 egg, whisked

Instructions

Combine flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Add butter, cut into small pieces.
Dissolve yeast with milk. Add liquid to the dry ingredients by stirring it from the middle, like a well.
Knead dough until smooth. Cover and let rise to about double it's size in a warm area of the kitchen.
Cut dough into as many pieces as you need for your bunnies.
Option 1: Knead dough into a long rope, flip once and twist into bunny ears. Add small tail on looped end.
Option 2: Form dough into smooth oval. Use scissors and cut into dough to shape ears. Pull apart dough ears and add two raisins as eyes.
Brush egg mixture on all the bunnies and set them on greased cookie sheet.
Heat oven to 400 F and put buns into cold oven. Let bake about 20 - 25 minutes, until golden brown.
You'll know the buns are done, when you knock on the bottom of them and it sounds hollow.

Notes

You can also make this with any challah recipe that you like.

/2014/04/16/easter-preparations-and-zopf-bunnies/

Cheesy Leek Tart

Giulia Doyle — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 10:34:47 +0000

One of my favourite things as a child were little leek tarts that you could buy frozen at the grocery store. They were small individual round tarts that my mom made along with cheese tarts and sometimes mushroom tarts. I don’t know where my love for leek comes from – I think the only time we ate leek at our home was in these tarts.

I believe the tarts I grew up with were a little more cream based with a larger percentage of leeks. This version is a combination of my love of cheese tarts and leek tarts – nothing is more comforting on a cool evening. Serve it with a green salad and you have a substantial meal. The tart warms up nicely in the oven as well if you have leftovers or want to bring it to a potluck.

To this day I will make the frozen tarts when I visit Switzerland – some things are best the way you remember having them as a child. What food do you associate with your childhood?

Leek Tart

Ingredients

CRUST:
150g of all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
75g cold butter
3-4 tablespoons of cold water
FILLING:
1 tablespoon of butter
2 stalks of leek, washed and cut into slices
1-2 tablespoons of flour
200 ml of milk (almost a full cup)
200 g of grated cheese (Gruyère and/or Emmenthal) (almost 2 cups)
3 eggs
Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Instructions

CRUST:
Combine flour and salt. Cut cold butter into flakes and add carefully to flour mixture. Combine carefully until you achieve pea size crumbles. Add cold water and combine dough quickly. I use my mixer to make my crust so I avoid touching the cold butter. I seem to achieve better results by not handling the mixture with my hands. Let stand covered about 30 minutes in the fridge.
FILLING:
While dough is cooling, heat butter in a pan and add leek. Cook a couple of minutes until soft. Drain as much grease off as you can.
Mix flour and milk. Add grated cheese and cooked leek. Mix in eggs and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Combine well.
Once dough is cooled, roll out dough on a floured surface, to 1/4 inch thickness. Pour filling on tart crust and bake immediately.
Bake at 250C (480F) in the bottom half of oven for 20 minutes

Notes

Start with one tablespoon of flour in your cheese and milk mixture. If you feel it's too liquid feel free to add a second spoon to thicken things up a bit.

If you are worried that your pastry won't cook through at the bottom, feel free to pre-bake it a few minutes ahead of filling. If you do that make sure to cover your tart with a bit of foil for the first 15 minutes of baking and then remove foil in the last 5 minutes to brown the cheese.

/2013/11/04/leek-tart/

Maluns and remembering my father

Giulia Doyle — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:24:50 +0000

My dad grew up in a small Alpine village, which today is part of a large ski resort. His father was a grocer and he was the first of his siblings to go to university, leave the small village and become a lawyer. My parents met in Miami of all places – no place more different than flashy Miami and a small sleepy alpine village.

My father loved food – he would try new foods and loved to seek out traditional foods all over the world. When we lived in a small town in Switzerland, he would serve brunch with pancakes, eggs and bacon – shocking the Swiss visitors with the type of food and the unsavoury hour it was served. This was the 70s and 80s after all. But he also made sure that we knew what the foods were that he grew up with – simple alpine food – potatoes, cured meats and sharp cheeses. My father passed away five years ago after a two year battle with cancer. He was 61 years old. Today’s recipe is Maluns – a meal he served us every time we visited after my parents divorced. Maluns is a potato based meal with origin in Chur. It was a special meal made by farmers for weddings – it’s very simple, but it takes some patience. So today I took the time to make Maluns and to introduce it to my children, knowing that he would have served it to them had he known them.If you ever visit the eastern region of Switzerland – make sure to try this meal. It’s comforting, simple and a piece of history.

Maluns and remembering my father

Cook Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 kg potatoes
300 g flour
salt
280 g butter
Apple sauce
Strong cheese, such as Alpine cheese, Gruyere, Tilsiter

Instructions

Cook the potatoes a day in advance and peel while warm
Grate half the potatoes and cut the other half into thin slices
Gently mix the flour mixture with a generous amount of salt and mix with all the potatoes until they are covered in flour
Melt 50 g of butter in a heavy skillet and add the potato mixture
At medium heat under constant stirring fry the potatoes - adding pieces of butter along the way.
After 45 minutes you'll get small, crunchy potato crumbs
Serve with apple sauce and strong cheese.

/2013/03/04/maluns-and-remembering-my-father/

Three Kings Cake

Giulia Doyle — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 19:44:24 +0000

When we were kids, my sister ALWAYS found the piece of Three Kings Cake that had the little plastic king in it; she got to wear the crown and be the king for the day. I’m not exaggerating when saying it was always; every single year from the day she was born – a good 14 years, and then I moved out. It was frustrating to say the least. But even if you don’t get the little king and are allowed to behave like a king or queen – the effort of making this yeast based sweet bread is worth it. It’s a nice little breakfast treat – a little sweet, but not too sweet. Even better if you live in a country where you can buy it.

We tried it this year – my kids are 5 and 3 – so when my little guy didn’t get the king he was quite disappointed, while his sister jumped with joy after she found it. We had to keep the peace by letting both of them wear the crown. I like keeping some of these Swiss traditions – there might not be many people here in Ottawa making a Three Kings Cake – but I think we’ll keep on doing it.

Do you celebrate Three Kings Day (Ephiphany)?

~~I used this recipe (in German) – while it was quite nice, I think I’ll try a different one next year.~~

Updated: January 6, 2014 with English translation

Three Kings Cake

Ingredients

500 g Flour
2.5 dl Milk
50 g Butter
1 Pk.Yeast
2 Eggs
4-5 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
100 g Raisins
Almond slivers
Rock sugar

Instructions

Warm milk and butter. Beat one egg.
Combine flour, yeast, salt and sugar and combine. Make an indentation and pour in warm butter/milk mixture. Add the beaten egg. Combine until you have a smooth dough.
Add raisins and mix well. Beat dough on counter a couple of times so the dough turns out fluffier.
Cover bowl with damp towel and let rise in warm area for 1 hour.
Once risen, take dough out of bowl and cut into 10 pieces. Combine 3 of them into one large ball and add the other seven around it once shaped as a ball.
Add plastic king (or whole almond) to one of the smaller balls. Add a round cake form (just the ring) to a parchment lined baking sheet. Assemble all pieces within the cake ring.
Let rise again in a warm area for 45 mintues. Take other egg and beat it with a little milk or cream. Brush top of cake with egg mixture, sprinkle with almonds and sugar.
Bake in preheated oven at 180C for 40-45 minutes until golden brown. Let cool and remove from cake pan.

/2013/01/06/three-kings-cake/

Gruyère Tart

Giulia Doyle — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:41:07 +0000

I thought I’d share my post from Fishly News with you here – it’s really worth trying – it’s delicious and easy to make.

I really don’t know what to call this – the literal translation of Käsekuchen would be Cheesecake, but then all of you would think this is dessert. So I’m calling it a Cheese Tart, because it’s savoury and it’s a main course – a very Swiss main course.

I have not made a Cheese Tart in years – I’m not sure I ever made one in Switzerland because they are so readily available at every bakery. I would often walk into a bakery at lunch and have a small Käsekuchen on the go – or get a larger one and have a big slice for dinner with a vinegary salad.

I decided to make it from scratch a couple of weeks back and the kids loved it! Loved it so much that they asked for more the next week. So we made it again and it felt just like back home.

The first version I made with Emmenthal and Gruyère – this one is just made with Gruyère (get the good cheese – it has to be a nutty strong cheese for it to be authentic)

Gruyère Tart

1 tablespoon of flour
200 ml of milk (almost a full cup)
250 g of grated cheese (Gruyère and/or Emmenthal) (generous 2 cups)
3 eggs
Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Use your favourite pie crust and lay it out in your pie dish (large or smaller individual ones)
Mix flour and milk. Add grated cheese. Mix in eggs and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Combine well. Pour on pie crust and bake immediately.

Bake at 250C (480F) in the bottom half of oven for 20 minutes (large) or 12-15 minutes (small)

Serve warm or at room temperature with salad.