Swiss cookbooks.

Sometimes it amazes me as to how many new cookbooks come out every year – a good portion are exceptionally well done (some are terrible). But there are very few which deal with Swiss cooking. Search the internet, and the likely candidates date from the 1970s and have a classic fondue pot on the cover. People write cookbooks about French and Italian cuisine, but few write about Germanic cuisine. Swiss cuisine also differs from other types of Germanic cuisine due to the many distinct regions of the country. Many Swiss recipes are from rural roots, and remain exceedingly simple.

There are a few exceptions to the cookbook dilemma. The first is a book by Betty Bossi, “Schweizer Spezialitäten” – “Swiss Specialities”. Betty Bossi is a classic Swiss publisher of cookbooks, traditionally written in German – small, spiral-bound books which have provided bountiful Swiss recipes. This book, first published in 1991 is full of traditional Swiss cuisine. Also from the same publisher is “Guetzle mit Betty Bossi”, which although also in German may contain the best Swiss cookie recipes (stay tuned for a series of these recipes this December).

Lastly there are two recently published books. The first is Schweizer Küche – “Swiss Cooking”. This book covers classic recipes from the perspective of eight Swiss “regions”. For example, Zürcher Geschnetzeltes  (veal strips in a cream mushroom sauce served with potato Rösti) from eastern Switzerland; Bündner Gerstensuppe (barley soup) from the Grisons, Papet Vaudois (leek stew with sausage) from Romandie (western French-speaking region) or Risotto Ticinese (risotto from Ticino). This is not a large book, and concentrates more on savoury rather than sweet. Written in German, French, and English, my only issue with this book is that the recipes could have been better formatted.

The second is Winter in the Alps, by Manuela Darling-Gansser – a trip through Switzerland in winter (2008). The book is a cultural exploration of recipes from her winter journey from Lugano, where her great-grandfather had a restaurant, to Zurich. The book contains a feast of photographs from the journey, giving one the sense of real Swiss cooking, behind the veil of chocolates and fondue. I’ll do a more extensive review on this book after I’ve had a chance to cook a few recipes from it!