Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, where, weirdly, we somehow made a minor connection last week to today’s post. Given the mess of a time we’ve been having (as somewhat belabored in last Thursday’s post), that’s honestly both surprising and emotionally calming. So, If you’re just here to get eating, click this link. But if you want to see how we stumbled ass-backward into the ditch of success, let’s dig in.

Rösti Toasty

Title Jon really pushing the edges of audience trust this early, eh? For those who don’t know, that umlauted O means that no, in the native Swiss, rösti does NOT rhyme with “toasty”, instead sounding closer to “rusty”. (the umlauted O is a very interesting sound, in that basically ALL the English examples of the vowel sound being made immediately hit precede an R, and thus it’s often accidentally pronounced as if it has an R. it’s an almost guttural ‘uh’ sound, like the I in “bird” or ‘flirt”, or the O in “word” or “worm”) R-uh-stee.  (Technically. I have heard MULTIPLE American chefs pronounce it “roasty”, so it’s hard to know if America just chooses to ignore the umlaut, or if it’s being taught incorrectly in American culinary schools or what)

Like how the Massachusetts schools keep teaching people it’s “chowdah”.

And what it is, is…basically Swiss Hash browns. Or like, Big Swiss Latkes. It’s a dish of grated potato, fried and shaped into a cake or patty with a golden brown exterior, and served typically as a side to a breakfast, lunch, or light dinner. It’s often studded with additions such as herbs, or cheese, crumbled bacon, or even diced apples, depending on what it’s being served with and where it’s being made. So imagine the elegant bastard child of a McDonald’s Hash brown patty, and a Denny’s loaded Hash brown.

The semi-amazing coincidence bringing this together with last Monday’s post is that supposedly, rösti originates in the canton of Bern, where Emmentaler cheese is also from! Apparently, it forms a relatively interesting political distinction in the region too: if you were unaware, Switzerland is essentially the crossroads of Europe, with Italy to the south, France to the West, Austria to the East, and Germany to the North. (technically, it’s “Germany to the Northeast, and France to the Northwest”, but whatever.) and because of that the land was both fairly valuable, and fairly difficult to hold onto. Which is how modern Switzerland ended up with 4 official languages (German, French, Italian, and Romansh), all of which are rather interestingly altered in Swiss speech.

“Did shomeone shay Romansh?”

Like, in Swiss Italian, the word for “bus” is not autobus as in standard Italian, but autopostale... because in Switzerland, the Post Office runs the buses. (Or at least the intercity ones. I can’t find a clarifier if there are like, city bus systems that don’t answer to them. So the Swiss version of Greyhound buses are part of the Post Office, because originally, they were stagecoaches hauling mail between cities that would also take on passengers. So it became an expected thing that if you needed a trip between cities, you’d check the post office for a ride.)

Swiss post offices ALSO have banks in them, and I just want to highlight that it really miffs me to hear the LITTLE ways other countries have really mastered convenience and infrastructure and America hasn’t… Switzerland, Japan, and Singapore, man. Singapore has crosswalks that can have the light go longer for the elderly! Shit, I have really wandered off topic. WHAT I WAS SAYING is that, interestingly, rösti is much more heavily associated with Germanic Swiss cuisine/culture than Italian or French, so the region where it is commonly served and eaten is referred to as the röstigraben, or “rösti ditch”.

It might seem weird to call like, a huge portion of the country a “ditch”, but it helps to know that it’s mostly the valley between the mountains the green part is built on, and the mountains the purple part is built on.

I said ENOUGH, Caption Jon! We have other important details to discuss. So yeah, rösti is a part of Swiss cuisine, and especially the Canton of Bern, from which the dish gets its French name röstis bernois. And since we kind of blew over them in last Monday’s post, and we’re honestly a little out of things to talk about other than making the (fairly simple) rösti/getting into the politics of my source for the recipe, I figured we could dive a bit into what, exactly, cantons are, and why Switzerland has a rösti ditch in the first place.

Canton can you do the Canton

So, I mentioned it earlier, but really, the story of Switzerland’s cantons comes from the story of the Alps and power. Since a lot of American geography/history tends to only remember the Alps exist when talking about Hannibal’s elephants, it’s worth reminding people that there is a full Mountain range in Europe, that’s actually taller than the Rockies. This had a major effect on travel, and it’s how a lot of political and capital energies got concentrated: If you’re a merchant in the Ancient world or Middle Ages, and you want to take goods from Rome/Italy, your best trade routes are:

-Through Austria to get to Berlin, Prague, or the Nordic countries

-Through Switzerland if you want to go to Cologne, or the Netherlands

-Through France if you want to go to Spain or France…but if you’re doing that, why not avoid the mountains altogether and sail from Genoa?

This was particularly important as political and financial power grew outside of Rome…but it’s actually in the ever-famous follow-up that our story begins: the Holy Roman Empire. By this point in history, the areas that would one day Switzerland had already long ago figured out that being mostly mountains and a long valley by a lake, that their primary source of income was not the things they grew, but as a trade route. As such, three communes in the region (Schwyz, Underwalden, and Uri), formed a pact of mutual alliance, who were then joined by 3 other cities/communes…and then the six of them joined forces and conquered two more. This created the Acht Orte, or “Eight Corners/Edges/remote pieces of land”, translated into French as cantons, referring to the fact that, being high mountain territories, the region was not central to anyone’s dominion.

The region was given the power of reichsfrei during the Holy Roman Empire, meaning “free of Empire”, which referred to the fact that the Cantons were exempted from standard hierarchies of the state, and instead answered directly to the Emperor. Why? Because of taxes: since nobles had the right to tax the lands they held, having a noble in charge of your primary trade route would have given them a lot of money and power. So instead, the Emperor declared that the communes were in charge of themselves, and he was in charge of them.

Do not make me remember which of these is the beating stick.

The following couple centuries saw the Scwyz/Suisse/Suittes Confederacy win a couple more wars to prove that they could take care of themselves, and conquer a couple more cantons. During the Thirty Years War, these independent allied cantons ended up pledging neutrality to the broader conflict, due to divisions within the confederation on which side they should join. (the war used a “Protestants vs Catholic” divide to kind of cover the fact it was mainly about politics, and the Cantons were divided between predominantly Catholic and Protestant.) This made formal the initial reputation of Swiss neutrality: no longer did they ANSWER to no one but the Emperor, but it created an idea of them as “above” the normal conflicts and politics. (Which was…a fairly gross overstatement, but that’s how a lot of national stereotypes work: The whole idea of the French as cowards is actually the British and Americans covering themselves from being massive fucking tools in the 20’s and 30’s. France won World War 1, bleeding through the nose and running the many components necessary for victory, and then said “hey, Germany didn’t lose nearly enough troops for them to think this was a complete failure, and their economy is going to recover fairly easily, at which point If we don’t do something, they’re just going to do this again.” To which America and Britain said “You’re being paranoid/That doesn’t sound like our problem.” So France spent the next 15 years being the guy constantly trying to “screw over” Germany, and begging America and England to just announce that “if Germany fucks with me, you guys will come help me kick his ass, right?” Which both countries refused to do until whoops, the war had already started, and oh no, France got invaded. Man, you’d think people who spent 15 years begging for help would have PREPARED (to get their shit rocked by the guy they had openly stated multiple times was doing better than them economically.))

Newsflash: Herbert Hoover, kind of a asshole. Next up, “What is this new fangled Dust Bowl people keep talking about?”

But that initial spirit, of multiple different sovereign groups aligning themselves, is a defining part of Swiss politics and culture, roughly akin to American states, but actually slightly MORE independent in some ways: the American Constitution specifically notes that states can make agreements, but not treaties, with foreign powers, but Swiss cantons are empowered to form treaties independently.

So in some ways, labeling a dish “from the canton of Bern” is much like saying it’s a “Texan dish” in America: a distinguishing mark that tells those in the know something of the culture that created it. And now that you know all that, let’s poorly fry some potatoes.

Wham Bam, Can-Do  Ma’Am

Today’s recipe comes from Bon Appetit, and it is, in many ways, a very inauthentic rendition of rösti. However, you COULD excuse that with A: the fact that, as we’ve argued before, authenticity is a complex and difficult idea to really unpack, and B: technically, you could view this as a riff not simply on rösti, but also on spinat und spiegelei. To unpack that more fully, I first have to explain what we’re doing.

So this recipe, called “the simplest rösti”, is a dish of grated potato and onion, fried and browned on one side, finished in an oven with some eggs baked on top, served with a dressed salad. It’s almost a kind of French bistro lunch approach to the dish, because the method used to make this is…while not unheard of in Switzerland, also not the norm. As I noted earlier, ‘standard’ rösti is typically a cake or puck, cooked much in the way a Spanish omelette or a couple other dishes are: you fry it on one side, then flip it out onto a plate, slide it back into the pan, and fry the top.

BEHOLD THE DARKNESS OF THE FRY.

However, one dish that rösti often accompanies is spinat und spiegelei, meaning “Spinach and Fried egg” (implicitly a sunny-side up egg, as Germany doesn’t really fry eggs on both sides.) which is fried eggs served with wilted (or even creamed) spinach. So if you view the eggs and salad components as a riff on that idea, the dish makes a LITTLE more sense: it’s like that line between “a bacon cheeseburger”, “a burger with egg and bacon on it”, and “a burger with bacon, egg, and hash browns on it”. The Hash browns wouldn’t normally show up on a burger, but they’re excused by association: the bacon and eggs are fine, and the hash browns hang out with them, so it all kind of makes sense.

And hey, honestly, it would not be hard to make this a more traditional rösti. I’ll give you some tips along the way. Starting at the very beginning: see, in the interest of being simple, this recipe has you just grate raw potatoes, since the dish is going to spend a fair amount of time in the oven. In a more traditional recipe, you’d want to parboil and cool the potatoes (meaning you’d boil the potatoes so they’re soft, traditionally the night before so they have plenty of time to cool) before grating: this will let you fry/bake the potatoes less, since they’re already cooked. So for a traditional recipe, boil the potatoes, let them cool, and grate them. For today’s recipe, just grate them.

Grate. Just Grate.

Next, you’ll want to thinly slice an onion. The recipe didn’t specify what KIND of onion, and when I asked Nate to find me an onion, he pointed out there was a red one right in front of me, so we went with that. Thinly slice it, and the next step is to squeeze the potatoes to get out moisture. And I’m going to tell you right now: I think we screwed this step up. I don’t think we got the potatoes dry enough I think we would have benefitted by patting them on some paper towels. Funnily, this wouldn’t be a problem with the parboiled potatoes, since attempting to squeeze them dry would just mash them, but that’s the price you pay: you can boil potatoes for 20 minutes and cool them overnight, or you can squeeze raw boys for 7-10 minutes. (note to self: that last section sounds terrible, delete it and burn post to the ground.)

Also, you’ll want a big oven-safe skillet. And I want to be clear here: BIG. This is 1.5 pounds of potato, and if you can’t get it dry enough and thin enough, this thing will get gluey and weird. We loaded it into what I THOUGHT was about the right pan size, and had to go to a pan that was twice as big, losing the initial heat transfer from “hot oiled pan”.

Even our BIG pan might have been too small.

Once the potatoes are IN the pan, the recipe is actually very SIMPLE, but that isn’t the same as very easy: at this point, you’re playing a “how good am I at timing things?” game. As the potato fries, you’re meant to shake the pan every now and again, so you can see that it’s not sticking, and that the mass of potatoes is moving as a unit. Let it fry for 8-10 minutes, until the bottom is “deeply” browned (by which the video implies “more brown than you may be used to”) and then you can do one of two things. For a more traditional rösti, it’s time to flip, fry on the other side, and serve. For OUR rösti, it’s time to pop into a hot oven for around 20 minutes.

While that’s going, it’s time to make a dressing for the salad. Or don’t, honestly. The recipe is called a “cheater’s Caesar”, consisting of garlic, lemon juice, mustard, mayo, and parmesan, so you could go a step further and just cheat by BUYING Caesar, or another salty-lemony dressing option. Hell, I bet there are plenty of acidic dressings that could work with this dish.

I did choose to make the dressing, like a chump, because it calls for both mayo and Dijon, meaning I was able to use up the excess mayo-mustard sauce from last Thursday’s grilled cheese.

Why did I not think to take a picture until after I scooped out most of it? Who knows.

Dressing made, the next step was to crack some eggs onto the weirdly gray potatoes, bake the dish another 10 minutes, dress my greens (which you could make spinach, but I went with a local mix that included some edible flowers for STYLE), and serve.

I have, rather carefully, hidden almost all visible potato. Totally by chance.

The result was…solidly middle-ground. The eggs were a little over-cooked for my family’s liking, and there was a definite issue of the bottom crust being VERY deeply browned (edging on burnt), but the rest of the potatoes being a kind of translucent blob. I’d personally consider this preparation a failure, but I think the failure points are obvious in hindsight (lack of drying, initial screw-up with the pan size leading to wonky cooking) and thus, forewarned, I could do much better with a second attempt (or you could, knowing how critical those steps are.) Honestly, for the amount of effort involved to the amount of food produced, I recommend giving it a try if you’re able.

THURSDAY: JON WATCHED A NETFLIX SHOW. SO NOW WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT. AMAZINGLY, IT”S SEMI-RELEVANT.

MONDAY: I REMADE MY LIST, AND EVEN BOUGHT SOME INGREDIENTS TO SET MYSELF UP TO MAKE STUFF FROM IT. I STILL DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT WE’RE DOING NEXT, BUT WE’RE POINTING TOWARD CHICKEN CUTLETS, AN ASIAN DINNER, OR…SHIT, I’VE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE THIRD THING. SOMETHING WITH ROMESCO SAUCE.

Recipe

Bon Appetit’s Simplest Rösti

Makes  4 servings

Ingredients

                Rösti

Roughly 1.5 pounds of russet potatos, scrubbed. (2-3 potatoes)

1 small onion

½ - 1 tsp kosher salt. (depending on the grain: ½ tsp for Morton’s, 1 tsp for Diamond, which is coarser)

Black pepper to taste

¼ cup olive oil

                Eggs

5-6 eggs

                Salad and Dressing

1 small clove garlic, grated

2 tbsp lemon juice

4 tsp Mayonnaise and Dijon (the original is 1 tbsp mayo, 1 tsp Dijon, but I used closer to 2tsps of each)

¼ cup olive oil

2 tbsp finely grated Parmesan (like, the dust in cans/pizza place packets)

2 large handfuls of spinach or other greens

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Grate potatoes on the large holes of a box grater. Transfer to a fine-mesh sieve and add onion; squeeze to expel as much water from potatoes as possible. If you want, wrap in a kitchen towel to help soak up the excess water. Sprinkle with salt, season with pepper; toss to combine.

2. Heat oil in a large ovenproof nonstick skillet over medium-high. Add potato mixture and press firmly into an even layer. Cook, shaking pan a few times (potatoes may stick at first, but just keep going; they will release), until deeply browned underneath (carefully lift with a spatula to peek), 8–10 minutes. Transfer to oven; bake until rösti is cooked through (pluck a bit off the top and taste for doneness), 18–20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, whisk garlic, lemon juice, mayonnaise, mustard, and remaining ¼ cup oil in a large bowl until smooth. Whisk in Parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Set dressing aside.

4. When rösti is cooked through, remove from oven and evenly crack eggs on top; season with salt and pepper. Bake until eggs are just set, 10–12 minutes.

5. Add greens to reserved dressing and toss to coat. Top rösti with salad.