The next place I had fondue was in a restaurant at the top of a mountain with a friend. We went skiing at a mountain called Leysin, and for lunch we went to a revolving glass restaurant at the very top of the mountain. After a day of skiing in the cold, fondue was the perfect meal!
Although fondue is delicious, it is a very simple dish consisting of just a pot of melted cheese with a little bit of wine for flavor. You eat fondue by skewering chunks of bread or pickles (or potato) on long forks and dunking them in the cheese. The cheese is kept hot by a little fire underneath the pot, and once the pot is almost empty you scrape up the crust of slightly burnt crispy cheese at the bottom. They call this la religieuse, which means something like “the nun”, and it might be called that because it looks like a nun’s habit (her head covering). This cheese smells a LOT, but it tastes so good!
At any souvenir shop in Switzerland, they sell decorated cowbells, because there are cows and goats and sheep everywhere in this country. Just about anywhere you hike, you can hear the bells ringing around the necks of these animals. It is not surprising, therefore, for there to be so many Swiss dishes containing cheese because there are so many animals here available to milk! And for long winters, especially for people living in the mountains, cheese is a perfect food. It gets better as it ages, and you can eat it either hot as fondue or raclette, or you can carry it as a block and eat it while hiking or skiing- two very important Swiss pastimes!
