fondue?

Somehow some friends and the GF decided that we're doing fondue for X-mas eve. The GF is lacto-intol so it's not the cheese variety. Or chocolate. Call me cynical, but I've never had fondue of any sort, mainly because it doesn't seem very interesting to me.

Can anyone elighten me? :spiteful:

Cheers! mpp

lol sounds like they are going to have a hot pot. more along the lines of stuff prepared before hand, and cooked in a stock with every one together. Had one of these for Thanksgiving celebration at the Sushi bar I work at.

^ like it he said.

My wife and I went to the Melting Pot, which is an expensive fondue place, after she wanted to go for a few years. I talked her out of it a couple of times but we she finally just made the call and we went. I was out $100 bucks for about $40-60 dollars worth of food. The dessert course was the best, but other than that we had to cook our own food in wine broth. It was a new experience but when we left my wife said she didn't have to go again. If you are doing it at home it should be decently fun though, it would have been nicer if we would have had a few friends along because we were there around an hour and a half, 3 courses. Grab a lobster tail and your favorite cuts of beef and a few kabob veggies and you'll be set.

A good hot pot broth is a mix of beef and chicken stock, seasoned to taste. Thinly sliced meat, especially lamb, is great. I would also recommend large shrimp, wild salmon sliced sashimi-style and mushrooms.

Ample selection of condiments is essential: Hoisin sauce, sriracha mayo, honey-mustard dip, sesame seed dressing and the like.

I always enjoy a good sparkling wine with hot pot, a Cava from Spain such as Segura Viudas does the trick.

For sanitary reasons I always provide other cutlery, so that the fondue forks are only used for dipping your food in the broth and not eating. Even better if you have enough fondue forks for each kind of raw meat, to eliminate any risk of cross-contamination.

A couple more thoughts:

Since the hot pot/fondue is quite a bit of prep work, I would start with a simple green salad (even seaweed or sea asparagus in rice wine vinaigrette) and some nice fresh fruit to finish.

You could also accompany your hot pot with par-cooked noodles like buckwheat soba for dipping, or provide steamed rice on the side.

Thanks for the advice. Found a pretty good site - bestfondue.com - that has lots of good ideas. I'll put together some sides, sauces, etc. and make it fun.

We're probably going to have to play board games and sing X-mas carols....

We used to go to a fondue place in Atlanta that would use oil & you'd basically deep fry your food on a skewer. Chunks of beef, mushrooms, pork, shrimp, etc. You didn't want any "juicy" vegetables like tomatoes that would make the hot oil splatter--although there were always cherry tomatoes on the side. You then had dipping sauces--horseradish, remoulade, teriyaki, etc. to dunk your fried food in.

Another reason not to eat off your fondue fork--they can be VERY hot when they come out of the pot.

mpukas said:

Somehow some friends and the GF decided that we're doing fondue for X-mas eve. The GF is lacto-intol so it's not the cheese variety. Or chocolate. Call me cynical, but I've never had fondue of any sort, mainly because it doesn't seem very interesting to me.

Can anyone elighten me? :spiteful:

Cheers! mpp

Click to expand...

You can buy lactose free cheese if you still want a traditional Fondue.

This is gonna be about the dumbest thing I think I've ever done... so stupid... can't believe I'm letting this happen...

Alright, alright, it wasn’t that bad after all. The food came out well, and everyone was happy – and that’s all that really matters in the end!

Pickles to start – carrot, daikon, cucumber, radish (sorry, can't get the pic to rotate)


Salad – fennel, radicchio, endive, grapefruit, edible flowers, grapefruit juice vinaigrette


Sea – diver scallops, opah, Norwegian salmon, XL tiger prawns


Farm – Creekstone Farms beef – spinalis dorsi


Veg & starch – blanched broccolinni & orange caulifower, Janapese “salty noodles”


All together, pre-table


At the table
Sauces
Red curry peanut
Roasted red pepper, garlic, shallot emulsion
Fresh horseradish & wasasbi mayo
Chile-ginger-scallion soy
Prepared horseradish-mustard


Some good wines

What fun!