Pride and Pesto

When the summer residents in my dorm were asked to prepare for the potluck last week, I was rightfully scared. It's a little-known fact that I have cooked very few things -- and by myself, to boot. (Green bean casserole for Thanksgiving is the one consistent exception.)

And so I began planning like we had done for our Harvard house Iron Chef, except I realized something: absolutely none of the food was going to be pre-cooked. I had no fallback, not even chopped chicken tossed with spicy peanut dressing (oh look, satay!) This, this required different plans.

I quickly laid down some ground rules:
- No baking. Too many desserts and baked pastries in Geneva.
- No meat. I haven't cooked meat before, with the exception of overcooking my hot pot at Shabu-Zen. Inadvertently causing a salmonella outbreak = not good.
- Has to be easily made in small batches. My cooking equipment here consists of a 10" frying pan and a pot that barely fits a rectangle patch of ramen.
- Preferably something I won't botch on the first try. This eliminated a good deal of the ideas I had.
- No sandwiches. Most people in the dorm make sandwiches for all three meals (breakfast: Nutella, lunch: salami and Gruyere, dinner: prosciutto mozzarella and tomato), so that would be cop-out central. I briefly considered smoked salmon wraps (which happened to be a potential entry for last month's Iron Chef), then realized that was a little too close to a sandwich for my comfort.

Then, I tried to recall what I had made before. That left one thing, besides casseroles, cakes and stirfry (I'm not counting boiling frozen dumplings here): pesto. This was the closest foolproof recipe I would get; I quickly ran to the grocery a few hours before and grabbed all of the ingredients: basil, garlic, etc.

Of course, I forgot a few details: last time, I had someone boil the pasta for me...whoops. Also, I had neither blender nor sharp knife for mixing/cutting - which meant I coarsely chopped everything with a butter knife. And then equipment issues:

- It took fifteen minutes for the water to finally boil...since I didn't have salt, either.
- My pot really truly only cooks for one. This means half a package of pasta will not fit inside.
- If your water takes a long time to boil and you're cutting everything with a butter knife, cooking pasta for twenty will probably take more than the twenty minutes I alloted myself.

With all of this in mind, I didn't take photos of my experiment. I also showed up fifteen minutes later, which was fine because so did everyone else (whew, being on Harvard time is not a dealbreaker). The potluck was excellent - and surprisingly enough, I was one of three people to cook (couscous and potato-dill stuffed phyllo were the other dishes). I quickly discovered an addiction to chocolate covered almond wafers, and that in Switzerland, it's common to put Smarties on your fruit salad.

And! My ego won't let me forget -- I got two compliments on my past, including: "I'm Italian and I can say that this tastes authentic." I wish there was a pasta badge I could iron onto my backpack...

although one of the housemates did have to get a extra glass of water after she bit into a unchopped clove of garlic.

Gelato Wars

(And when I ask if I can take a picture, I really mean two...sorry!)

Ever since I "moved" to Boston for school, I've found myself shifting away from cakey, pastry desserts towards ice cream (never sorbet, unless it's ninety degrees and there's nothing else - buying sorbet, in my opinion, is like rationalizing your Icee, but for a dollar more). This might be due to the inch-thick layer of icing on Harvard desserts (I dislike excessive icing, unless it's cream cheese on carrot cake), but more likely due to the opening of Berryline, coupled with the handfuls of dollar-off coupons I received from Herrell's at the beginning of the year.

In any case, I've channeled this love for solid dairy into the search for the best gelato here. So far, I've been to four places, two of them repeats. The main takeaway? Don't buy gelato in places that sell other food. Good gelato deserves fidelity. (This fact remains true in Boston's North End - go to the place left of Mike's Pastries and not in Mike's Pastries for gelato...)

1) The gelato/glace cart adjacent to the Jet d'Eau
I've mentioned this cart before; any cart along the Geneva side of the lake will do, given that they serve the same company's ice cream. The rose gelato was amazingly refreshing and well scented; the flavor somewhat makes up for the thinner texture. Although this place had the smallest portion, it's also slightly cheaper than the other gelato I've tried at CHF 2.50. Highly recommended, though I can't say much about the other flavors.

2) The gelateria at Bourg de Four
Partially because so many restaurants are in Bourg de Four, I've gone here twice. (I don't have its name down, but it's the only gelateria in the area, between the cheap green-awning pub on the left and the wonderfully pink chocolate shop on the right.) Both times were subpar experiences, even on a hot day (which immediately lowers one's expectations); the first time, I chose the blood orange since I bypassed that particular flavor at the Jet d'Eau. The texture was thick, but felt rather grainy. It wasn't as if there were chunks of orange pulp in the gelato (which I wouldn't have minded, anyway), but it seemed as if there was well-mixed powder inside. Questionable. I attributed this particular distaste to my own anti-preferences for anything that resembles sorbet, and chose the almond a few days later. Different, but not better - still a grainy texture, and again, it wasn't a nutty texture (though it was clear that they had used genuine almonds). At CHF 3.50 a scoop, it's clear that there will be no third visit.

3) Gelateria, Vevey (Old Town)
You begin to wonder if gelaterias have specific names. (Usually, they don't - unless it's a cafe, and then you avoid their gelato.) This particular place had some unusual flavors for Europe, including guava and lychee. (Interestingly enough, cassis - aka blackcurrant - is a pretty common flavor in Swiss gelaterias. As is chocolate orange - which is also available at JP Licks.) I actually ditched the guava for the caramel de sel gelato, inspired by Stanfood's wonderful review of fleur de sel cupcakes coupled with my love of the $4.50 box of Trader Joe's salt-coated brownies. It was a good call for CHF 3.50, though I probably should have asked for the guava sample. The caramel de sel gelato was wonderfully rich - almost too much (I was starting to gag without any water nearby). The salty overtone was there, though it would have been nice to have some crystallized sea salt in the gelato's contents; the caramel was buttery, but clearly brown-sugar based. Twenty minutes later, the aftertaste continued to linger.
The gelato counter at Vevey, complete with fake styrofoam balls spraypainted with the corresponding color of each flavor.

4) The winner: GelatoMania (Geneva and Carouge)
Yes, this is a chain store. But yes, they only sell gelato. And yes, this is our winner on all four major dimensions: taste, texture, quantity, and presence of weird flavors (as my friend Erin duly noted, "Only a few would go out of their way to find the weird gelato flavor, and then order a full cone of it."...but apparently we also share the tourist consensus). The gelato is creamy and refreshing without any freezer burn. And the scoops are significantly larger than the first two places I've mentioned; one scoop for CHF 3.50, two scoops for CHF 6, and if you get two scoops you can get a double cone. If you're easily amused like me, the choice should be obvious.
The choice is obvious. Here: basil pineapple on the left, cucumber mint on the right.

Like the Vevey gelateria, this chain has at least twenty something flavors - but besides the standard stracciatella or noixette (hazelnut) - all of which they have - GelatoMania makes fairly unusual combinations, per its claim of making "perfumees glaces" (perfumed ice cream): basil pineapple, cucumber mint, spiced apple, goat milk, and popcorn; in my two visits, I've tried all five. Erin swears by another unusual flavor: cinnamon. The basil pineapple might be my favorite; I know I criticize basil for being "trendy," because I'm obviously a hipster, but pineapple is one of my favorite ice cream flavors - the basil makes sure it's not too saccharine, while adding a mild herb flavor.
Double cone: basil pineapple on top, popcorn on the bottom.

(When Bridgeman's used to be open in Minnesota, pineapple ice cream was my default order - the only other place I know of with good pineapple ice cream is Adventureland in DisneyWorld. There, the Dole pineapple stand sells soft serve pineapple. Protip: if you want pineapple ice cream in the dining hall, mix french vanilla with canned crushed pineapple - the pineapple has to be crushed, not in big pieces, and the sugar water has to be strained out, otherwise it looks somewhat disgusting.)

Goat milk was also much more mild than I thought - GelatoMania makes sure this isn't a savory gelato and so a good deal of sugar was added in, making it more like a "sweet milk" than a goat milk or vanilla. It would have been a good combination with the basil pineapple, though I didn't try it in that context. Spiced apple was my next favorite; it had hints of cinnamon and nutmeg, but upon tasting it it was clear that the flavor was apple. Tasting the spiced apple was like licking a frozen, very creamy apple cider. Popcorn was surprisingly delicious and made a good pair with the basil pineapple; its strong, rich butter taste made the gelato seem more like a dessert, while the basil pineapple tempered the flavor and made my stomach less queasy. Far, far better than a buttered popcorn Jelly Belly - however, the popcorn pieces in the gelato could have been better popped, since I nearly choked a few times from unpopped kernels. The cucumber mint was my least favorite of the bunch. I assume this is partially because I've never really been accustomed to natural mint flavor, but it's also weird - I was able to transfer the flavor of popcorn, but not cucumber mint, to gelato. Perhaps it's because the popcorn tasted like hot cereal, but that doesn't make sense either, since the cucumber mint tasted like tzatziki sauce. In any case, the blended shards of cucumber weren't as appealing as I expected, but it wasn't terrible, either.


5) Honorable mention: Cathedrale gelateria, Lausanne
On our way to the Cathedrale Lausanne, forty five minutes away from Geneva, we passed a gelateria that sold twelve flavors. One of them was curry - I promised myself that I would head back and get a scoop. Unfortunately, in our rush to Vevey, we couldn't stop by and by the time we walked up hills and hills to the gelateria, they had closed ten minutes ago.

I will assume that the curry gelato, unlike my curry potato chips (for which I spent $5 on), was delicious.
Lemon-black pepper dark chocolate bar: CHF 2.50 (and good 'n' tangy...though there could have been less lemon crystals and more lemon essence). Oriental curry chips: CHF 5.

Review: Le Syracuse

(Note: if there is erratic timing between my posts, it's because of the quantity of photos I'm uploading. Accordingly, blogposts often have some delay - apologies!)

As I mentioned, last weekend my friend Tomo - an intern at CERN - came out to visit Geneva, and I got to be his pseudo-host. Both of us were relieved that we had a travel buddy for the day trip, mostly because someone else got to take photos of us for our families back home.

We decided on lunch at the Bourg de Four, the liveliest part of the Old Town here. Tomo had heard me complaining of the definitely not-stipend-worthy prices here, and then realized I was serious when I said $25 was the average price for a sit-down lunch. (Apparently CERN partially subsidizes dinners in their cafeteria, since I gave him a dirty look when he said he got steak, veggies and a dessert for $15.) We found La Syracuse, though, and promptly were charged $3 each for a shared bottle of mineral water, but to our surprise, the water was crisp, and not just because it was chilled.

Tomo ordered the prosciutto pizza ($18), while I noshed on the steak des calamari, paired with pesto linguini. Both were solid choices. The pizza was a fairly good size for its price, though it was noticeably lacking on prosciutto (Tomo would consistently redistribute the prosciutto on the pizza, saving most of it for the last two slices).

The steak des calamari, true to its name, was two small slabs of calamari, and were well-grilled - I was surprised by their size, since typically, I eat my calamari in strips (I also had the brief fear that my lunch would result in a giant deep fried steak of calamari rings, held together with breading - not unlike country steak). The tomato sauce that accompanied it was a nice touch, though a bit too thick and salty. The pesto continued the lightness of the lunch, but also could have been less salty.

The summary: a restaurant that I might repeat, for the sake of price, but given that there are so many great places out here, probably not more than once.

Retroblogging: the first few days

To get to Geneva, I had a connection in Amsterdam, and was pretty impressed by the airport. It resembled South Korea's airport in frequency of cool blue and yellow graphics as well as the number of shops. Most of the Amsterdam merchandise was swathed in marijuana leaves and other such celebrations of localized Harold and Kumar. I'm not sure why I was surprised, but it was nice to have stores that were run by type of merchandise, and not brand; of course, the food ones were the most interesting:

Cafe Chocolat sold pure chocolate by weight, as well as hot chocolate, though it wasn't open when I was at gate.

I wish I could take meat and dairy products from one EU country to another.

Upon arriving in Geneva, I took a large swath of the afternoon just to wander through the streets and to check out the major landmark, the Jet d'Eau. The city is crowded during the majority of the day, which means that people are sitting out on cafe patios throughout all hours (until early closing around 8pm). The pace here is such a dramatic change from how I usually do things; although I do walk rather fast here (and because relative distance is shorter here, I can usually do more than a handful of touristy activities in a day), it's pretty ridiculous how long I take to eat lunch now. Forty whole minutes, haha -- even by myself.

The Bourg de Four is a neighborhood where a lot of people go for food; because it's in the vieille ville (old town) of Geneva, it also looks especially Disneyland-like. (I shudder for what I just said.)



I went to Chez ma Cousine for lunch. It's popular with Americans for the large quantity of food it serves at the price: half a baked chicken, with Provencal roasted potatoes and a salad, for about $14 US. It was a nice load before walking ten miles up the Geneva hills and around the lake; as you can probably tell from this photo, I was really hungry and nearly forgot to document the meal.


It was much better than my first lunch here at Migros, the grocery-cum-mall-cum-cafeteria, which I was told by the Harvard study abroad team was fairly reasonable. Can you guess how much this lunch cost?

That's right. $17 US for less than a half of pound of food from the vegetarian salad bar and a 7UP.

Now, a token picture of Lake Geneva, with the Jet d'Eau in the background:
All around the lake, there are a few cafes, but also many ice cream and sandwich stands. Although all of the ice cream stands are run by seventy year old ladies and seem family-owned, they all carry the same ice cream brand, the same signage, and the same price: US $2.50 for a scoop. Having endured Ben and Jerry's tyrannical $4.50 a scoop in Harvard Square (I ran out of my Herrell's dollar-off coupons, since they actually collect them now...), I willingly shelled out a few Swiss francs for a scoop of rose gelato. I couldn't simultaneously lick the cone and take a photo, but rest assured, it was delicious - and one-third the portion of a scoop in the States. That said, I'm under the impression the ice cream stands on the lake carry a relatively less gourmet brand, but it's been hard to find rose gelato anywhere else in Geneva (and I am sick of hazelnut gelato, thanks very much) and it is rather refreshing and less sickly sweet than other things. Next on the list: blood orange ice cream -- not sorbet.

To all you yuppies and quirky Juno lovers in Williamsburg: please consider rose gelato the new basil ice cream trend. In the meantime, here's a photo of the coolest trash can ever, near one of the ice cream stands. How space-efficient is it not?

Walking around Lake Geneva

Lots of stuff to backtrack on, but I'll start with today:

Because it's Sunday today, virtually everything in Geneva is closed - including supermarkets. I guess John Calvin's presence remains exceptionally strong. Some, but not all, restaurants and cafes are open, so this means that lunch and/or dinner will remain a kitchen job.

In fact, most things in Geneva close around 7pm on weekdays, which is actually pretty surprising for me. I mean, coming from the Midwest, on a weekday night I might hang out at the mall...which closes at 9 or 9:30pm. That is, the reason behind the early closings is for owners and employees to have time to relax with their family - which is a good reason, except for the fact that many people in Geneva are not from the area and as young adults, don't have family around. (I promise this isn't just me. Though, it probably means you'll see an influx of blog posts here on Sunday mornings in the U.S.)

My first few days in Geneva have consisted of exploring the town. Very surprising: I haven't eaten any Swiss chocolate (I've bummed Romanian chocolate off of my roommate, though, and it was necessary: the brand is called Heidi). Less surprising: I've substituted my chocolate consumption with a healthy dose of bread. My first meal here was tomato and brie (not mozzarella, as I discovered on my first bite) on a baguette.

Rolls, baguettes, crusty loaves: my breakfast is now a slice of baguette smothered with jam or Nutella. And my makeshift meals from my trusty section of the fridge consist of what I would call avant-garde (but really, broken-down) sandwiches: a couple slices from a crusty loaf, creamy French cheese slathered on top, surrounded on the plate by cuke slices and the best salami ever: salami from the deli, edged with black pepper.

In fact, it's the grocery stores that I enjoy wandering most here, and I lurk near the registers to see what people purchase, so that I can get some of my own. Weirdly enough, my French sounds best when I harass people in the deli line for recommendations - and gives me the best results, like the peppered salami. I've also been regularly drinking the sparkling passion fruit juice, Sumol, which is actually Portuguese and can be found in the States, though it's one of the few things that is cheaper here. (Consider: my cheap drink staple in Cambridge, Arizona Iced Tea, runs for US $2.50 here, instead of the 99 cent standard at the Harvard Square 7-11. Meanwhile, a bottle of Evian in the most expensive grocery here runs 80 cents.) I might add that the old-school garden fountains, are actually public fountains for people to fill up on clean water. My last addiction for this week is Nestle yogurt, which is about US $1, and comes in a variety of "exotic flavors," like pumelo-lychee (with real lychee pieces, just like Dannon), mango-guava and my favorite flavor, passionfruit.

Geneva it is!

For the past two weeks, I've been packing for Geneva, where my summer internship is located. And for the past few days, I've been in Geneva - and it's confirmed: it's one of the prettiest cities I've been in. Located by its eponymous lake (at least in English, its French name is Lac Leman), its trademarks include the Jet d'Eau (a water fountain in the lake that shoots up water hundreds of feet in the air) and the Flower Clock (again, self-explanatory: a clock made out of flowers).

Of course, there's great food - and access to it: bakeries on every block, cafes everywhere you turn, and department stores with entire basements devoted to groceries and wine. The first crackle of a baguette in the morning? Amazing. Surprisingly enough, I might even call myself a bread snob: in the three days since my arrival, when my friend Tomo visited and we went out to lunch, he marveled at the bread at the restaurant. "Too soft," I said. "Not enough crustiness."

For the next two months, I'll be documenting my eating interactions here. I've joked that this section of the blog should probably be called "How Will Heidi Manage to Eat Off of Her Stipend," because the shortcoming of the food here is that it's fairly expensive for someone from the U.S., as with everything else. The minimum for good sit-down lunches is around US $17 and for dinners, it's closer to $25. Hopefully, I'll be eating more than paninis on my lunch break, but I'll also be learning how to cook during this time, thanks to my roommates here.

So, welcome aboard!

A two-fer from cakeface:
Um...what? James Bond?! This just made Quantum of Solace so much worse.

[Geekadelphia: Daniel Craig is Now A Popsicle]

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