Keri White
I recently spent a couple of weeks knocking around Europe. We started in Zurich, a beautiful city with excellent food. The weather was quite warm and, despite being in fondue country, lighter fare beckoned.
We stopped for lunch at Café & Conditorei 1842, a historic café in Zurich’s Old Town near the old bar where the Dadaist movement was launched, and where Vladimir Lenin (yes, he of Bolshevik Revolution fame) hung out and drank beer before he upended the Russian empire.
The salad is typical — the dressing is described as “French” by the German-Swiss. I can’t vouch for the culinary geography, but it is excellent.
We also enjoyed open-faced sandwiches, which are fairly ubiquitous over there. They start with perfectly cut square slices of bread (crust removed), then are topped decoratively with a modest amount of fixings. These are not the overstuffed sandwiches one sees at Famous Fourth Street Deli; they are closer to elegant tea sandwiches and are eaten with a knife and fork.
Salad with “Swiss French” Dressing | Pareve
Serves 2-3
Some recipes for this dressing call for a raw egg and/or a tablespoon of heavy cream, but I believe those additions make the dressing unnecessarily heavy.
For the dressing:
Makes about ⅓ cup, which will dress 2 or 3 salads.
¼ teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (not grainy)
1 small clove garlic, pressed
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
Mix all the ingredients in a well-sealed jar and shake it well.
For the salad:
4 cups baby lettuce (spring mix, arugula, etc.)
½ cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 radishes, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
Mix all the salad ingredients in a medium-sized, shallow bowl. Add about 2 tablespoons of dressing and toss well. Serve immediately.
Canapes
These open-faced sandwiches, akin to tartines in France, are pretty, tasty and perfectly light for a summer lunch or supper.
The traditional Zurich versions are coated in aspic; this gives an attractive shine to the canapes, but I dislike the texture and concept of the gelatin, so I scraped it off in the café and skipped it when I replicated the dish at home. But should your taste run to aspic, feel free to coat the sandwich generously with it.
We sampled cheese and salmon canapes and found both excellent. These can be made a few hours ahead of time; the Swiss cafes have them sitting in cases all day. If you plan to eat them within an hour or so, you can leave them out at room temperature; longer than that, cover them with plastic wrap and pop them in the refrigerator.
Salmon Canape
Serves 1
1 slice best-quality white bread, trimmed of crust
1 tablespoon cream cheese, softened
3 slices smoked salmon or lox (enough to evenly cover the bread)
1 or 2 radishes, sliced thinly
10 capers, drained
1 teaspoon grated horseradish
Spread the bread with cream cheese. Top it with an even layer of salmon. Artfully strew the radishes, capers and grated horseradish.
Cheese Canape
Serves 1
The version we had in Zurich integrated pickled dried tomatoes and fresh apricots. It was delicious but not terribly practical for a quick lunch at home. I use the recipe below. If you are a fresh apricot fan and have them lying around, feel free to festoon the sandwich with them.
1 slice best-quality white bread, trimmed of crust
1-2 teaspoons mayonnaise
Scant teaspoon mustard
1 or 2 slices Swiss or Gruyere cheese
2 or 3 pickle slices
A few sprigs parsley or dill
Spread the bread with mayonnaise and mustard. Top it with cheese, then add the pickles and parsley.
