Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Philosophy Club Fondue

I know this is kind of late, but oh well. Last Saturday, the Philosophy Club (of which my brother is part of) had its annual fondue (at our house like usual). Xiao-Xiao, the club president, has this great recipe for cheese fondue with no wine in it! It's made of cream, cheese, and cream cheese. More specifically:
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 c. chopped onion
1 c. + 2tbsp heavy cream
8 oz. cream cheese
1 c. grated parmesan
1/2 c. grated gruyère
1/4 tsp nutmeg
First cook the onions with the olive oil. then lower the heat and throw in all the lactose-full white stuff and wait for it to melt. Wisk it and add the nutmeg.
With this delicious fondue we had baguette and blanched: broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, and yellow bell peppers. We also put out raw carrots, but the boiled ones were easier to eat with the cheese because they were softer.

The topic of discussion was education, so we compared the style of education in different countries. We often got off topic and started to gossip, but it was all in good fun!
When we finished the cheese fondue, I remembered a tradition that said to break an egg into the fondue pot, making an omelet that scoops up all the remaining cheese, yum!
For the chocolate fondue, in previous years we just melted chocolate with cream. This year though, Xiao-Xiao wanted to try a recipe she had found. It involved making a sugar+cornsyrup...syrup and adding chocolate powder and chocolate. I guess we didn't let enough water evaporate from the syrup, but the liquid would not thicken! In the end, Xiao-Xiao and I decided to add some cornstarch and hope for the best. The end result was good, but it was a bit too sweet and watery. I recommend sticking with the good old chocolate and cream.
With this fondue, we had strawberries, bananas, oranges, apples, and madeleines! The madeleines were a great touch because they absorbed the chocolate mixture.

In conclusion, the unorthodox (I've been using that word a lot ever since I started reading 1984 in class) cheese fondue was a success, but complications of the non-traditional chocolate fondue were not worth the effort. Just stick to the basic method with two ingredients.

2 comments:

Agnes said...

Pssst ... it is called the fondue, the fondu is the cheese ;)

Unknown said...

I've seen written both ways, so I decided "fondu" was the americanified way of writing it. I changed it now, so you can all stop bugging me now. happy? (thats my name!!!)