Cheese fondue is an old classic that still wows
Cheese fondue is something you can make quickly and pleases almost anyone. It gets people together to eat like nothing else. Who doesn’t like melted cheese? (Except for those with lactose problems, unfortunately, there isn’t any way to make a good vegan version.) Long ago, as a young man in another world, I worked in a cheese and chocolate shop in my hometown of Los Altos, California. We were encouraged to sample as many cheeses as we wanted to expand our knowledge of the enormous variety in the cheese case. My waistline expanded as much as the expertise I gained! I only worked there for a year or so, but I learned so much about cheese and thus began my lifelong love affair with everything cheese. One of the things I learned was how to make a cheese fondue mix that the shop packaged and sold. That same recipe has stuck with me all these years and is still what I use today. From that experience, my family started the tradition of having a big pot of cheese fondue on Christmas Eve every year.
The national dish of Switzerland, cheese fondue, was first mentioned in a cookbook from the late 1600s as a dish of melted cheese and wine used for dipping bread. By the 1800s, cheese fondue became popular in most cities and the lowlands of French-speaking Switzerland. Today we think of fondue as a rugged mountain thing. Interestingly, even back then, cheese was expensive, and poor mountain folk usually couldn’t afford to make it. Fondue is a great communal meal that is fun to share around a table getting the whole family and friends together. According to Martha Stewart, the queen of party etiquette, Cheese fondue has rules on how to eat. If a woman drops something in the fondue pot, she must kiss every man at the table; a man must buy the table a round of drinks. That makes things a bit unfair in a home as there should be plenty of drinks being served regardless, and maybe the men would like to be involved in the smooching too! But It’s still a fun…
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