Hi, I'm Andie.
I live near the Swiss Alps, in Bern, and I love not only melting cheese, but all kinds of Swiss cooking.
All in Swiss Breakfast
With the mercury just over 30°C at the moment, it's certainly too hot to cook, and luckily my Aunt Vreni recently gave me her super quick and easy recipe for Birchermüesli.
"It has ovomaltine in it, doesn't it?"
"Yep."
"Well, surely that makes it a breakfast food?"
A common exchange in our kitchen that has been used to justify breakfasting on Ovomaltine Crunchy Cream, Ovomaltine Petit Beurres, and now this cake.
With a glut of fresh pineapple, this tropical birchermüesli was born. It uses coconut milk, toasted coconut and dried pineapple, though you could use any dried tropical fruit. The most important thing is to only add the pineapple at the end—if you let it sit in the yogurt it gives it a funny, curdled taste. You can really easily make this dairy-free by using a non-dairy yogurt.
When you're too tired to make breakfast, have a stock of these cookies on hand.
Tatsch is a specialty from Graubunden. It has been described as a sort of sweet kind of spätzli, or akin to the Austrian Kaiserschmarrn, but this is a thicker, chewier kind of dumpling and it pairs perfectly with late summer fruits.
Although this dish is popular all over the world, it was two Swiss people who showed me the best way to make it.
Leftover bread? Smear on some chocolate spread, toss on some brown bananas, douse in custard, and you've got a breakfast bake.
The quality of Swiss milk is unparalleled. The act of taking the cows up to the Alps in the summer and letting them graze on fresh alpine meadows influences the delicious taste of the milk. However, it's not only the alpine pastures that make great milk, swissmilk lists several other reasons why Switzerland's milk is so good.
This recipe is endlessly adaptable. Any kind of bread will work, preferably stale. You could use any kind of melty cheese. If you don't have mushrooms, throw in some ham, or bacon, or leftover cooked chicken. If you have fresh herbs, throw in some of those in too. If you want to make this sweet, just omit the cheese and add some raisins or other dried fruit.
The Griessköpfli is akin to rice pudding (creamy, raisiny), but firmer, and therefore sliceable. It is dazzlingly toppable—pour over anything from boozy sauces to fruit compotes or caramels, or eat it plain and revel in its comforting simplicity.
When I first moved to Switzerland, I did a short stage at a lovely bakery in the mountains. With a 4:30 am start, by the time z'Nuni rolled around I was ravenous. I was offered my choice from the display case and I took a little pot of pink, berry Birchermüesli. Two bites and I was sold.
How could it possibly be so creamy?
"It's weird," was Sam's consensus on the original Birchermüesli recipe.
If you are familiar with the creamy variety sold in bakeries and cafes around Switzerland and the world, this is very much a departure, but it is the original version from Swiss physician and nutritionist, Dr. Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner.
In Swiss German the Aaschnitt, or end of the bread, is called something different in practically every region of the country. Regardless of what you call it, it makes great bread pudding.
I really wanted to like tannen syrup. I had never tried it before and it's thick and amber and smells like Christmas. It seemed so alpine and wholesome that I felt sure I would love it. I spread it thickly onto a piece of Zopf, breathed deeply (O Tannenbaum!) and took a bite. It tasted like an alpine meadow in bloom. It didn't taste like Christmas at all.
So, I decided that I needed to do something else with the rest of the jar, namely granola.
