Hungry skiers tuck into Hugh's apple and prune pudding cake. Photograph: Beat Schweizer
Heading home from my family ski-trip to Les Crosets, Switzerland, I'm carrying with me, along with the bumps, bruises, chapped lips and sunburned nose (and an as yet undigested kilo or so of Swiss cheese), a genuine longing to return. Odd because, after a 10-year hiatus since we last took to the slopes, I thought this was largely a mission to cross skiing off the list of things I want to do more of in the second half of my life. I thought this one was pretty much for the kids. But I had far more fun than I expected.
Luckily, the children loved it, too, as did our friends, the Skeets, all five of them. So we've agreed we'll be back within a year or three, same families, same resort, same chalet, right opposite the sensational Dents du Midi, a stunning Alpine ridge that catches the evening sun and, I suspect, persuades many loyally to return year after year.
So what else made it so good? The snow, certainly. To arrive at your chalet at around suppertime in the dark, and find that soft, fat flakes are falling fast through a black, windless sky, puts you in the mood like nothing else – except, perhaps, a quick snowball fight. Ours managed to produce plenty of laughter and no tears – not even when Oscar got Freddie right in the ear. It's special stuff, snow, and never more so than when you're together as a family.
Snow is particularly handy for the skiing, of course. The fact that our first day on the slopes – the first in a decade for us, the first ever for our kids – took place in near-perfect snow conditions was fantastic. If you're a solidly average but out of practice skier – and that's the brush with which I'd tar all four of us adults – then a dusting of real fresh snow on a well-maintained piste is a true tonic.
The weather got better, as in hotter, from each day to the next. Inevitably that meant things got pretty slushy on the lower slopes by lunchtime, but by the second day we'd sussed that a hard (well, full) morning's skiing, plus an hour or so mucking around with the kids after a quick cafe lunch, was generally going to sate the snow-lust for the day. Usually one or two of the grown-ups were back in the chalet with most of the kids by 3pm, giving everyone, particularly me, plenty of time to think about supper.
In fact, the preparation of a hearty supper for 10 was never much of a sweat. And this was largely down to a seriously well-executed shopping trip to the nearby town of Champéry at the very start of the week. Les Crosets, a small village at 1,400m, is really all about the skiing, but Champéry, a windy 400m and 20 minutes down the mountain, is a proper little Swiss alpine town. It's not exactly the hive of artesanal food boutiques I had hoped for, though look beyond the big brands in the supermarkets and you'll find plenty of cheeses and a few good-looking cured meats sourced directly from the surrounding countryside.
But the real food find was undoubtedly Champéry's fabulous cheese shop, Fromage etc. We loaded up with goodies, including an outstanding aged Gruyère, a red-skinned aged goat's cheese that was great for grating on pasta, and a Vacherin Mont d'Or, that thick-skinned, runny cheese that comes in a round pine box.
I was on dinner duty most nights; not unaided, but largely unchallenged in my culinary dictatorship – except by small children constantly demanding Nutella pancakes. In the end I made a large batch of pancake batter most nights and kept it in the fridge. Pancakes proved the perfect plug for the gap between lunch and supper, and the best possible instant fix for the fact that on a skiing holiday everyone's always hungry. But they had to be deployed strategically. From day three, pancakes were allowed only at breakfast and within half an hour of returning to the chalet from the slopes, when they bought the chef a little time to prepare a slightly more sophisticated supper aimed at pleasing all members of the party (aged from four to 44).
But in some ways the pancake approach underpinned all my cooking endeavours on the holiday. Successful ski cuisine has to deliver on the après ski appetites' uncompromising demand for maximum starch with maximum taste, while also meeting the tired chef's requirement of minimum labour… and another very large glass of wine, please. So the chalet chef has to be able to function on autopilot and yet consistently deliver big-hitting, crowd-pleasing, tummy-filling, sleep-inducing, flavour-laden feasts.
Given this mission, pasta dishes and risottos are no less valid for being obvious. Pasta carbonara, as you probably know, is the most cunningly time-efficient way yet devised to shovel 1,000 very tasty calories down each of 10 hungry gullets. But for a change, and an upping of flavours, I made one using a spicy, chorizo-style sausage instead of the bacon. The other great starchy stuffer is polenta. To my delight, I found some in the supermarket that was ready-made, in a kind of sliceable polenta sausage. I found the best way to get the kids to give it a chance was to cut thick slices, fry them until crispy, then serve with grated parmesan. The next time, it came with a topping of sautéed wild mushrooms: not all the kids were convinced, but that meant all the more for the grown-ups.
My two big set pieces of the week were a bollito misto late lunch on the terrace (see recipe below) and, of course, like British ski parties in chalets all over the Alps, we just had to have a fondue on our last night. The cooking, by the way, is the easy part. Especially if you buy the "house fondue mix" of ready-grated cheese from the local fromagerie (they'll all be local, so there's no shame in it). Don't be tempted to add anything to the melted cheese except the prescribed quantities of white wine and kirsch, and a twist of black pepper. Have a few salad leaves standing by, if you must, but forget starters or pudding, just make a date with a pot of molten cheese and a mountain of cubed, crusty baguette. And get ready to be very silly.
Bollito misto
A massive meat fest, to be made with at least three different "boiling" meats. Make one a free-range chicken, another a good piece of ham or pancetta and the third some kind of garlicky sausage, then everyone will have something they like. Serve with Puy lentils, mustard spiced fruits (aka mostarda di Cremona; Italian delis sell the stuff), salsa verde (recipe below) and mustard. Serves eight to 10.
1 free-range chicken, jointed
1-2 boiling sausages (750g-1kg)
1 smoked ham hock (or 1 thick piece pancetta, around 1kg)
3 onions, peeled and quartered
2 bay leaves
1 small sprig fresh thyme
2 celery hearts, quartered
2 cabbage hearts, quartered
5 large carrots, peeled
Salt and black pepper
Put all the meat in a large casserole with the onions, bay, thyme and just enough water to cover. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook on a low heat for two hours. Add the celery hearts, cabbage hearts and whole carrots, season and cook until the vegetables are just tender. Lift out the meats, cut into thick slices and serve on a platter surrounded by the vegetables. Ladle over some of the rich stock (or serve it separately in a jug), and serve with mostarda, Puy lentils, mustard and the following salsa verde on the side (stir some of the salsa into the stock, too, if you like).
Salsa verde
1 small garlic clove, peeled
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, stalks removed
15-20 basil leaves
3-4 sprigs fresh tarragon, picked
4-5 anchovy fillets
1 tsp capers
1 tsp mustard (Dijon or English)
1 pinch sugar
A few drops of lemon juice (or vinegar)
Freshly ground black pepper
2-3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
On a large board, chop the garlic as finely as you can. Add the herbs, anchovy fillets and capers to the pile of chopped garlic, and chop the lot together until well mixed and fairly fine in texture. Transfer to a bowl, stir in a little mustard, sugar, lemon juice and black pepper, plus enough olive oil to give it a glossy, spoonable consistency. As you add these last ingredients, taste and tweak the mixture until you get something you really like. This sauce is best made just before serving, but it does keep for a few days in the fridge, covered or in a jar.
Apple (and prune) pudding cake
At tea time, the most popular person in the chalet is the one who has made a cake. I love this "pudding cake" – you can serve it cold with a cup of tea or coffee, or for pudding in warm slabs with lots of cream, custard or yogurt. It's so good, quick and easy, we made it twice in the week. The second time we ran out of apples, so I made it with half apples, half prunes. Serves eight to 10.
For the apples
2 dessert apples (or 4, if you're making a pure apple cake and omitting the prunes)
25g unsalted butter
1 heaped tbsp granulated sugar
¼ tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
200g prunes
For the cake mix
150g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp almond extract (optional)
75g white or wholemeal self-raising flour
75g blanched almonds, whizzed until finely ground, or ready-ground
Grease a rectangular, 20cm x 5cm deep cake tin, and line the base with buttered baking parchment. Heat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3.
Peel, quarter and core the apples, then cut each quarter into three wedges. Melt 25g of butter in a frying pan until it sizzles gently, add the sugar and stir until the mixture bubbles. Add the apples and cinnamon, if using, and cook over a medium heat for five minutes, turning occasionally, until the apples are just tender and very lightly caramelised. Remove from the heat.
Put the butter and caster sugar in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Break in an egg, beat well, add the second egg, the almond extract, if using, and a spoonful of flour (to stop it curdling), and beat again. Add the almonds, sift in the remaining flour and fold in gently. Scrape the mix into the tin and smooth the surface with a palette knife. Arrange the apples on top of one half of the cake, the prunes on the other half, then trickle over any juices from the pan. Bake for 45–50 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Stand on a wire rack to cool.
Chorizo carbonara
A bit of a cross-cultural mishmash, this – a classic Spanish sausage in a classic Italian pasta sauce topped with a classic Swiss cheese – but just the thing to feed a hungry ski-crowd with minimum fuss. Serves 10.
1kg spaghetti, linguine or other long pasta
Salt and black pepper
500g frozen peas (optional)
2-3 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
800g fresh chorizo, removed from their skins and crumbled, or cured chorizo, diced
6 large egg yolks
600ml double cream
150g Emmentaler, Gruyère or Appenzeller, to grate on top
Add the pasta to a large pan of well-salted boiling water and cook until al dente, following the instructions on the packet. If you're using peas, cook them in another pan of boiling salted water.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the chorizo briskly for 10 minutes, until crisp and cooked through. (If you're using fresh chorizo, start with a lump, then, as it fries, break it up so it forms lots of succulent little nuggets and crumbs, maximising the surface area available for crisping.) Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and cream, and season lightly (the chorizo is already highly seasoned).
When the pasta is done, drain and return to the hot pan (add the drained peas at this point, too). Tip in the chorizo, followed by the egg mix. Use two forks to mix the eggy cream into the pasta. The sauce will cook in the heat of the pasta, coating each strand in a light, creamy sauce. Serve at once with a final twist of black pepper, and the grater and cheese so people can help themselves.
Polenta with mushrooms
A substantial and tasty starter. If you can't find ready-made polenta, make up a packet of instant polenta, and leave to cool and dry out a bit until it is sliceable. Serves eight to 10 as a starter.
100g dried ceps
100g unsalted butter
2-3 tbsp olive or sunflower oil
700g fresh mushrooms, cut in thick slices
Salt and black pepper
2 cloves garlic, peeled, halved and sliced thin
A little cream (optional)
750g ready-made polenta
Parmesan or aged Gruyère, to serve
Put the dried ceps in a bowl with 400ml boiling water and leave for 20 minutes. While they're plumping up, melt 70g butter with a dash of oil in a large frying pan over a medium-high heat. When the foam subsides, add the sliced fresh mushrooms a few handfuls at a time, along with a good pinch of salt. Fry until they give up their moisture and begin to brown – you may need to do this in batches as they won't brown properly in an overcrowded pan, so when they're all cooked, return any previous batches to the pan.
Strain the ceps, reserving the liquid and passing it through a cloth or coffee filter to remove any grit. Stir the plumped-up ceps and garlic into the pan and fry for two or three minutes. Add 200ml of cep liquid, season well and leave to bubble for five to 10 minutes, until most of the liquid has reduced away. Finish with a dash of cream, if you like. Keep warm while you prepare the polenta.
Cut the polenta into eight to 10 thick slices. Warm the remaining butter in a large frying pan, add a dash of oil and gently fry the polenta, a few slices at a time, until golden on both sides. Serve immediately with the mushroom mix spooned on top. Pass around the cheese and grater..
Classic fondue
Fondue is a bit like Christmas dinner. It's not necessarily going to be the best meal of the year, but it will be great fun if you get into the spirit of it, especially if you introduce the forfeit rule for accidents. Serves 10.
1 garlic clove, peeled
350ml dry (ideally Swiss) white wine
500g each Gruyère and Emmentaler (or raclette), grated
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp kirsch
Freshly ground black pepper
Cubes of crusty bread, cut into cubes
Cut the garlic in half and rub the cut surface around the inside of a fondue pan or any small, heavy saucepan. Pour in the wine and place over a medium heat until it begins to steam. While it's warming up, mix the grated cheeses and flour in a large bowl or plastic bag, then add a handful at a time to the wine, stirring to melt before adding the next handful. When the mix is smooth, stir in the kirsch and some pepper. Leave to bubble for a couple of minutes, then place on a lighted burner to keep warm while you tuck in. Serve with a bowl of crusty bread cubes. To eat, spear a bread cube with a fondue fork or skewer, dip it into the molten cheese and devour. Lose a piece of bread in the cheese and you have to pick a forfeit out of a hat.
Getting there easyJet flies to Geneva from many UK airports, from around £23 one way; from there, Les Crosets is a 90-minute drive, though Hugh and family travelled by train to Geneva; a return ticket from London with RailEurope costs from £182.
Stay at Chalet les Béliers, Les Crosets, Switzerland. A week's stay self-catering costs from CHF500 a person (around £295), based on 10 sharing.
Source:guardian.co.uk
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