Helen's Fondue

People often ask me where they can find a restaurant or a cooking class like Lillian’s in The School of Essential Ingredients – a place where needs that you didn’t even know you had are met, where you realize that life can be beautiful or sad, but in any case is meant to be lived. My response is that Lillian’s is fictional, but that magical restaurants exist. Sometimes you just stumble across them.

Which leads me to fondue. In The School of Essential Ingredients, fondue is a way for Lillian’s cooking class to celebrate Valentine’s Day, so it was with a feeling of serendipity that I found myself on Valentine’s Day weekend this year in New York City with my 21-year-old daughter, trying to track down a fondue restaurant in the East Village that a friend had told her we HAD to find. It was called The Bourgeois Pig.

We decided to locate it while we were out exploring in the afternoon, just so we would know where to go that evening. We walked right by the address – no restaurant. We asked at a shop two doors down; the clerk had never heard of the place. We asked people on the street. Nothing. Finally, while getting our lunch order at a (fabulous) porchetta sandwich shop we mentioned it. Oh yes, they had heard about it. They pointed across the street to a blank building facade, its windows closed with wooden shutters. We went and found “The Bourgeois Pig” painted in small, curling letters on the door frame.

We came back at 7 pm to find magic – Paris in another century. The shutters open, candle-light flickering inside the windows. A man with a delicious resemblance to Johnny Depp standing at the door, dressed in cape and cravat, letting people in two at a time. We entered to find dim lighting, red flocked wallpaper, the tables pressed up against each other like lovers. The fondue was lush and warm and into it we dipped an incredible array of crusty bread and grapes, apple slices and roasted rosemary potatoes. The wine was cold; we talked about everything and nothing for hours; a (real) frenchman sitting at the bar sent my daughter a glass of champagne. Oh my.

So here is Helen’s fondue, with some variations as suggested by a magical evening in New York City.

Helen’s fondue recipe

garlic clove, cut in half
1 1/2 cup white wine
2-3 T kirsch
1/2 lb Emmenthaler
1/2 lb Gruyere
1-2 T cornstarch
a pinch of nutmeg

Rub fondue pot with garlic clove. Add white wine and kirsch and heat. Grate cheese and put in plastic bag with cornstarch; shake until cornstarch covers cheese. Add cheese slowly to pot, stirring in a figure-8 motion. Add a small pinch of nutmeg at the end...

What shall you dip in your fondue?
Try:
crusty french bread, cut in cubes
grapes
apple slices