A Fondue Party For Four

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up one day with a distinct thought in my head: I haven't had fondue in awhile... why!!!  I'm not sure if I had dreamt about eating fondue or had some kind of fondue-related theme dream, but I wanted fondue and I was determined.

Last night was the night... ::happiness::  Fondue is best when you can get a few people over so that you can get a wide variety of items to dip with.  I made up some excuse about new floors in the house and seeing them, but really I wanted my friends over to eat fondue!!  Luckily, my fellow food-lover EH did not hesitate when I said the magic words "FON-DUE" and she brought over her fiance to share the gooey cheese goodness.

There are a wide variety of cheese fondue recipes, but this night I just wanted something classic, something original.  I searched for a classic cheese fondue recipe, and found the following recipe on 101cookbooks.com.

Cheese Fondue

Ingredients    
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 lb. Gruyere cheese, shredded (or 1/2 lb. Gruyere + 1/2 lbs. Emmental cheese) - For cheese, I used 1/2 lbs of Swiss Gruyere (the only kind of Gruyere I found in the nearby Safeway) and 1/2 lb. of Jarlsberg (a Swiss-style cheese).  Basically, you want to melt any kind of stinky Swiss-style cheese for fondue...
- 3 TBSP all-purpose flour
- 1 3/4 cup dry white wine - "2 buck chuck" at the nearby BevMo would work!  I used Charles Shaw's Chardonnay, courtesy of EH.
- 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg - I didn't have fresh, so just used ground nutmeg.
- A splash or two of kirsch (optional) - I didn't put this because I didn't have any... it was optional anyway!

Steps
1. Toss the shredded cheese with the flour.
2.  Rub the interior of a medium saucepan with the peeled garlic.
3.  Place the saucepan over medium heat and add the wine.
4.  Bring to a simmer and add the cheese mixture, one handful at a time.
5.  Stir in the nutmeg.
6.  Stir the cheese over low heat until smooth, melted, and bubbling. 
7.  Add a splash of two or kirsch in the melted cheese.
8.  Continue stirring until it starts to bubble just a bit.  Transfer the cheese mixture to a fondue pot and it's ready for dipping!  Remember to stir frequently so that it doesn't clump or burn at the bottom.

I actually melted the cheese a bit differently than the way the recipe called for because I had an electric fondue pot that I found on sale a few years back at Target.  I did all of the wine boiling and cheese melting within the fondue pot, which is easier and saves me washing another saucepan!  The only warning I have for this electric fondue pot is that even at the lowest setting, the pot heats up very quickly and cooks rather quickly also.  So, pay careful attention when you are melting the cheese and don't let it burn!

The other important part of cheese fondue is the dipping items.  I think you can just dip about anything in cheese and it will be good (yeah really, ANYTHING), but it's a good idea to have a wide variety, from vegetables to meats to fruits to breads.  For this party of four, a good amount of dipping items are about 2-3 kinds of blanched vegetables, 1 type of bread, and 1-2 kinds of meats.

This is what we dipped:

Cauliflower, blanched (found a cool purple cauliflower at the nearby local market!)
Green beans, blanched
Roasted potato wedges (I used red potatoes because they are sweet and easy to cut into wedges)
Lil' Smokies (the best kind of meat to dip with cheese!)
[Not pictured] French bread, cubed
[Not pictured] Dill pickles, Snack'mms from Vlasic (sounds a bit strange to dip dill pickles but EH introduced this to me a few years ago and couldn't stop dipping pickles since!)
[Not pictured] Chicken karaage, cubed (this is Japanese-styled deep fried chicken.  We had this leftover from eating at a ramen restaurant for lunch so decided to dip... see, you can dip anything!)

With a bottle of Robert Mondavi's Fume Blanc and almost near silence during dinner due to our busy mouths eating quickly, it was another successful cheese-dipping-fun-night!  Thanks <3!