Fondue is a fun 'do' this season. Cozy up
around a pot of bubbling love with family and friends. Once a popular
dish for dinner parties in the seventies, fondue is back in a big way
for the millennium. User-friendly and festive, fondue is multi-faceted
in the option of cooking up chocolate or cheese, satisfying cravings
for sweet or salty tastes. And, it’s a perfect compliment to a
robust wine.
Fond memories
There are three main types of fondue: melted cheese, melted chocolate, and an
Asian hotpot-type where meat is cooked in oil or broth. According to About.com,
Fondue originated in Switzerland as a way of using up hardened cheese. Deriving
from the French verb fondre, meaning "to melt," fondue was
a classic peasant dish. Accounts vary on how fondue was originally created. Traditional
fondue is made with a mixture of Emmenthaler and/or Gruyere cheese and wine,
melted in a communal pot. Cherry brandy is added to the melted mixture, which
becomes a dip for pieces of stale bread and crusts. French chef/scribe Brillat-Savarin
mentioned fondue in his 19th century writings, but fondue really hit its heyday
in 1956, when Chef Konrad Egli of New York's Chalet Swiss Restaurant introduced
a fondue method of cooking meat cubes in hot oil. Chocolate fondue followed in
1964.
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