Local Swiss and French cuisine

The other night I realized that I have neglected to share some of the amazing food experiences that we have had thus far in our European adventures. Below is a culinary summary of the last few months:

Local ingredients: The Swiss eating culture (and economy) is very much based on local ingredients.  I'm convinced this is for two purposes: (1) Swiss people really do care about eating good quality, natural food. Europeans frequently make fun of the "fake" and chemical-y food that are produced by the American food industry. I can appreciate this part of it, who doesn't want to eat natural, good food and know where it is coming from?  (2) the Swiss government realizes how darn expensive their country is, so they put controls on their food so that it is sourced from within the country. For example, if you go grocery shopping across the border in MUCH cheaper France, you can buy very inexpensive meat. But, the Swiss quickly figured out that way too many residents were doing this on a weekly basis, so to control their local "meat" economy, the customs/border control agents put a limit on the amount of meat that you can bring from France into Switzerland. This often results in many unknowing expats being stopped at the French/Swiss border with their groceries out on the street while the border control agents literally count how many grams of meat you have purchased and then impose a fine on you if you go over the limit. I kid you not. It happened to us. The result is that many people in Geneva are forced to buy products locally in Switzerland.

When we first moved into our temporary accommodation, there was a mozzarella shop downstairs that specialized in making home made mozzarella from local cow's milk. Our first meal in town consisted of this tasty caprese salad creation.

Eating out in Geneva is really expensive (and to be honest, the restaurants in the city aren't all that great!), so we have grown fond of making lots meals at home. This delicious-ness is a home made quiche with local ingredients that we made.

Mountain meals: We have a running debate as to why meals in the mountains are just SO much better than the meals in the cities.  One theory is that you are just so darn hungry from the skiing or hiking that your standards are lower. But my theory is that the food really is that much better. Maybe its the fresh ingredients or the presentation, but there is just something about mountain meals that outshine all others. An interesting difference to note between US and European skiing culture is that lunch time is the focal point of the ski day.  It is common that at least 1-2 hours are set aside for a formal, sit down lunch in one of the mountain restaurants, and making a reservation is required. I have yet to see a "cafeteria" which is the norm in US ski resorts... I don't think they even exist here? But with my love of food, I'm not complaining ;)

Our first weekend in town, we hiked up to a little mountain restaurant in the middle of nowhere and found this gem. The fall season brings the restaurant season of "la chasse", which means all kinds of game meats are served for meals.

The Swiss love their cold meats. This beauty was served to us while sitting outside at one of the ski resort restaurants. 

Did I mention the portions are enormous??

Another amazing mountain top meal

French cuisine: This past Friday night we had a private chef come to our apartment to teach us how to cook French cuisine. Geneva is surrounded on all land sides by France, so there is a lot of French influence in the cuisine. I found a coupon for the session on the local Groupon-type site here. He came over with all of the ingredients and showed us how to make a traditional 'coq au vin', which is essentially a delicious chicken stew. One interesting fact that I learned: the base for most French cuisine comes from the combination of celery, carrots, and onions, which in combination, actually has an official name in French ("mier pois").

Our chef, Ernie!

The delicious end product right before we consumed it.

The Swiss favorites: You know where this is going, CHEESE and CHOCOLATE. I've blogged a few times about our experiences with these foods, so I won't go overboard; but, yes they are of course amazing. I actually wasn't the hugest fan of chocolate until I came here and now I love it, there is just something about a rich, Swiss dark chocolate that is unlikely any other chocolate I have had before. There are many types of Swiss cheese, but the most popular ways to eat it are as a fondue or as raclette. Fondue is pretty self explanatory; but, raclette often needs a bit of an explanation. Let me start by saying I have a true addiction to raclette. Its totally unhealthy. It is a specific kind of cheese that you melt and pour over cooked little potatoes. It is served with little pickles and onions and dried meat that is unique to Switzerland. Some also put a raclette "spice" (which is essentially paprika) or mushrooms on the cheesy goodness and our German friends like to add a little mustard to the mix. Having raclette is a fun, simple, and inexpensive way to invite friends over for dinner.

The raclette oven in action - you put your cheesy shovel under the hot coils and cook away. This is the "at home" version, when served in the mountains its typically still in the form of a big wheel of cheese that is then melted bit by bit and scraped onto your plate.

The full spread - its a fun Swiss dish to introduce to family and friends when they first arrive!

The main ingredients and tools!

Introducing... Heidi/the snowmobile

After much debating over whether a car would be a good option here in Switzerland and searching for a car that wouldn't break our Swiss piggy bank, we finally purchased a car over here!  Here she is, by Facebook survey and popular demand her name is either Heidi or the snowmobile (interchangeable depending on whether you ask Ryan or me). She is a 2004 Audi A4 with all wheel drive so that she can attack the snowy mountain roads with her prowess.

A couple of interesting things we discovered about purchasing and owning a car in Switzerland:

1. Swiss people take VERY good care of their things, whether it is an apartment or a car, everything is meticulously maintained. The car we bought is a 2004 and you can barely tell its even been used even once. Even though the Swiss' finicky rules can get annoying sometimes and prices are certainly higher than anywhere else in the world, its times like this where you realize how this translates into everything here being top quality, you will always get quality for your money in this country (which is one of the reasons that Switzerland is always one of the front runners on the quality of life index by country each year).
2. You can lease used cars in Switzerland. We ended up not going this route and purchasing; but, this is often a really attractive idea for expats in the area because it can be very affordable if you don't want to shovel out the purchase price up front and don't mind the financing costs.
3. Due to the price of fuel in Europe, it will still probably be cheaper for us to take trains pretty much anywhere within Switzerland with our half fare card (a special card that lets us get half price on all Swiss train tickets). But for trips to nearby France or Italy which aren't on the Swiss train system, or when guests come to visit, the car is the better option financially. To give an example, a round trip train ticket to the nearby town of Lausanne which is 45 minutes away by train costs a visitor without a half fare card almost 80 dollars.  Multiply that by 2 or 3 people taking the train together and you can easily spend hundreds of dollars in train tickets just going a couple of hours away within this country. So the car becomes a very attractive alternative.  
4. There are a surprising number of people in Europe who don't know how to drive! Because most people take trains throughout Europe due to the convenience and the price, we actually know a couple of people that either don't know how to drive at all or have just started to learn recently. 
5. The last part is not necessarily specific to Switzerland; but, it was pretty neat so I'll tell the story anyways ;) We bought our car through a company called Autociel, which essentially is a Swiss car agency that buys and sells cars on behalf of expats in the area. We negotiated the 'keys in hand' package into our car price and as part of this package, Autociel completes every administrative task related to the purchase of the car for you. So after we saw the car online and agreed to a price, they drafted the contract, brought the car to its rigorous Swiss inspection, registered it, brought it to a garage after finding there was a recall on one of its parts, helped us coordinate with the car insurance agency, put the license plates on, got the annual Swiss highway road sticker for us, and then drove the car to the front door of my office and handed me the keys (and flowers! how funny to receive flowers with your car). Given the months and months of administrative tasks that come along with having to move countries, it was SO nice to just have someone entirely manage yet another "administrative" process for us and then just show up and hand us the keys and flowers to our new car! 

With the purchase of Heidi/the snowmobile, we are officially done with all of our moving and settling in tasks! Although I've come to terms with the fact that our "to do list" will never go away, at least now its filled with more things like "plan Easter vacation" and "plan wedding" instead of boring administrative moving tasks. So after just passing the one year mark of when we started to plan this whole crazy adventure, we can say that we are officially "settled in".  HOORAY!

"11 Things Americans Can Learn from the Swiss"

I came across this article today in one of the blogs that I follow over here, it provides an interesting perspective on some of the differences in daily life between our American and Swiss lives... happy Sunday reading y'all :)

A little ski accident and Europe's scariest ski slope

All of the expats here have stories of their ski accidents, some have broken legs, some have torn ACLs, some have gotten some cuts and bruises..... it seems some sort of ski accident in the alps is a right of passage in the expat world, so something was bound to happen.  Well folks, Ryan had his first ski accident. He collided with one of his friends on a ski slope and superman-ed out of his bindings and landed face/arms first into the hard packed slope. THANKFULLY he had just bought a helmet the week before so nothing serious happened (i.e., no concussions or worse), but he did end up with some cuts and bruises. Rest assured, he is doing fine now, but is still feeling the after affects of a really sore body. This was pretty much the extent of the physical damage, so all in all he's pretty lucky that such a major fall resulted in only a few cuts and bruises!

The accident happened on Saturday and we originally had plans to go skiing with our friends in Verbier (the Swiss alps as opposed to the French alps that we have been skiing mostly in recently) on Sunday. After the accident happened, Ryan the trooper didn't want to miss out on a fun ski day with friends, so he decided he wanted to push through the pain and still go skiing. He decided that as long as he could just "take it easy" and go slow and not fall, then he wouldn't be in pain. So off we went to Verbier. And then this happened....

We neglected to see this sign before we went down what we found out afterwards was one of Europe's most dangerous ski trails, the Tortin.  In our defense, we don't just blindly go down trails, our friend did warn us that it was difficult. Let me tell you, this trail was the steepest, hardest trail I have ever been on. It is not only steep but it is covered in moguls the size of cars. Poor Ryan was wincing the entire way down.  Amazingly, we all made it down without falling, even though it did take us a solid 30 minutes to get down. I have found in general that most trails in the alps are actually rated easier than trails in the US (i.e., a black here is never really a black in the US), with the exception of THIS TRAIL. Word to the wise, if you come skiing here, DO NOT go down this trail unless you are very experienced. I do have to say though that the bright side to this trail is that once you finish with the pain and agony, it has a gorgeous cruising run at the end of it, really one of the best I have ever been on... maybe once I become a more experienced skiier, we will decide to take on the Tortin again...