Food on the Move Tips | Page 39 of 66

Mapshalia Restaurant, Tbilisi

Swiss Cheeses

The world pictures Swiss cheese with holes, but out of the whole family only Emmentaler actually has them. A guide to nine Swiss cheeses: from Gruyère, which knocked Emmentaler off the export throne, through Appenzeller with its secret herbal brine and Tilsiter, named after a town that no longer exists, to Sbrinz, which gets broken rather than sliced.

Tête de Moine: The Swiss Cheese You Shave into Rosettes

Tête de Moine is a semi-hard Swiss cheese made from raw cow's milk in the Jura mountains, and instead of being sliced it's shaved into thin rosettes with a girolle. The name "monk's head" only arrived with the French Revolution, and the girolle dates from 1982. How the cheese is made, why it tastes different shaved than sliced, and what a tub of rosettes costs in a supermarket.

Schoggiweggli: The Chocolate Roll from Basel

A buttery yeast roll studded with big chunks of chocolate, scored on top before baking so you can see what is inside right through the shop window. It is said to have been created in 1975 by the Basel confectioner Anton Bachmann - though that date comes only from his own company. What the name means, why Germans mix it up with another pastry and what the roll costs in Basel.

Birnbrot: Pear Bread From the Swiss Mountains

Birnbrot is a pastry from eastern Switzerland in which the dough is only a thin wrapper; the heart of it is a dense filling of dried pears, nuts, figs and spices. It was born in the mountains, where expensive flour was stretched with dried fruit, and in the Engadine it still pays for a sled ride on St Stephen's Day. It's sliced thin to go with afternoon coffee; its smaller sibling, birnweggen, is baked around Lucerne.

Pretzel: Lye-Dipped Bread

The pretzel is a lye-dipped bread from southern Germany that has made itself at home across the whole German-speaking world - in Austria, in Alsace and in Switzerland. The name grew out of the Latin word for arms. The pretzel itself has gathered more legends than hard evidence. Before baking, it takes a dip in a weak lye solution.

Swiss Bread and Pastries

Nobody slices a Silserkranz - everyone just tears their own roll off the wreath of lye rolls. And the name doesn't come from a village up in the mountains, as the story usually goes, but from the salty bath the wreath shares with the pretzel. Along with it I've picked two more pieces out of a Swiss bakery window: the buttery Butterweggli and the potato roll Kartoffelbrötchen - prices and flavors included.

Beerawecka: The Alsatian Christmas Loaf of Dried Fruit

In Alsace, the loaves baked before Christmas hold more dried fruit than dough: pears, figs, apricots, prunes, raisins and nuts steeped in brandy, held together by nothing but a handful of dough worked in between them. Beerawecka ripens for days or weeks, gets sliced thin, and has relatives across the Rhine, in Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol. Not even the Alsatians agree on what its name means.

Swiss Chocolate

Switzerland doesn't have a single cocoa tree, and yet to the whole world it's the byword for chocolate. Two inventions from the late 19th century were enough: milk chocolate from Vevey and conching from Bern. Add the Swissness law, which cost Toblerone the Matterhorn on its wrapper, and the supermarket brands the Swiss buy for themselves.

Swiss Wine

The Swiss export barely one bottle in every hundred and drink the rest themselves. White wine here means Chasselas, a variety geneticists now trace to the shores of Lake Geneva; the country's red flagship is Cornalin, a variety that died out in its native Italy and survived only in Valais. And because the terraced vineyards are worked by hand, shipping the bottles abroad simply isn't worth it.