Take it away, Tara!
Jana (from Just Makin' It) and I have been slow cooking our way through A Year of Slow Cooking. We are on recipe 11. I planned an at home fondu date night for the man and I so slow cooker cheese fondu was a perfect recipe pick for this round.
Fondu is my favorite. When my birthday comes around, that is usually the meal that The Man plans for me. The Man and I have been making fondu at home since we were dating. It's such a great way to connect over dinner. It's not one of those kinds of meals where you can stuff your face and then chat.. it's one of those nibble here chat, nibble there chat type of meals. I was excited to try out Stephanie's recipe in my Little Dipper. That enabled me to get all of my main course prepared and ready for us to start.
This is Stephanie's recipe: Fancy Cheese Fondue Little Dipper Recipe
I didn't follow her's exactly. We like the traditional cheese fondue.
I used:
I used:
1/2 Cup Greyere
1/2 Cup Emmenthal
1/2 Cup Dry white Wine
1 garlic clove pressed
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 loaf of French bread
1/2 Cup Emmenthal
1/2 Cup Dry white Wine
1 garlic clove pressed
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 loaf of French bread
If you are having trouble finding these cheeses at your grocer, be sure to check the deli section. They usually have a special refrigerator section for their "fancy" cheese. Let's get going.
First grate your cheeses.
Yum!
Next place all of your ingredients into your Little Dipper and turn to high until the cheese is melted.
After I got my Little Dipper going, I got the rest of our meal ready for the actual date.
The Things knew what was going on because they got "Freezer Meals" for supper. They thought it was awesome that we were going to stay home and have a date. I will take one any way I can get it :) Thing 2 was more excited about it than Thing 1. After the third time of me putting him back to bed he said, "Mom, I hope you have a good date." He gave me another kiss and hug and that was the last I heard from him!
Our date night meal underway.
And now, back to the results of the cheese fondu... The taste was dead on, but the consistency was not there. I noticed that Stephanie's Little Dipper doesn't have heat settings. Mine does. My Little Dipper never got hot enough to fully melt the cheeses properly. I believe her Little Dipper must get really hot if she got her cheeses bubbly. This was not the case with ours. I did manage to get a few really good bites.
Overall, cheese fondue was a fail in my Little Dipper. I think if I had let it go for 2 hours maybe.. just maybe it would have been hot enough to make it just right. Next time I will stick with using our fondu pot. The cheese is my favorite part and I was so disappointed that it didn't turn out. If you have a Little Dipper like Stephanie's and try this please let me know if it turns out for you. I'm pretty sure the issue was with my Little Dipper.
I'm very disappointed that you waited until after providing the recipe and step by step instructions to point out that the recipe didn't work. I thought your recipe sounded so good, and I had no reason to keep reading once I went through the recipe and step by step! I didn't see your indication that the recipe didn't work until I had already bought everything and came back to the page to look at the recipe again.
ReplyDeleteAfter making the fondue and comparing it back to Stephanie's recipe (which I have made before), she clearly uses less wine and more cheese. The lil dipper had no problem melting my cheese, it melted in less than 30 minutes. I think the problem was that there was too much wine (I added all of my leftover gruyere, but still very watery.)
Thank you for your comments. My friend, Tara, who wrote the post, was, I believe, trying to mimic Stephanie O'Dea's format in giving the recipe and then giving the verdict. When I first started following Stephanie's blog, I was also a little frustrated that she waited until the end to tell that the recipe was a fail. I quickly learned to read through the entire post first and then even read through some of the comments to see concerns and tips her other readers had. Tara and I attempted to take some of Stephanie's recipes and make it our own, many times with success, and a few times not so much.
ReplyDeleteI hope that even though your recipe also turned out watery it was still delicious. Thank you, again, for your input. Tara and I both appreciate any tips and concerns our viewers may have.