Peak enjoyment with Alpine food made at home

AS winter continues, a lot of people who’ve spent time skiing in previous years find themselves turning to Alpine food in order to stave off the cold and wet. I know this is true because I’ve just received an email from the public relations team at Lidl informing customers that the store’s popular Alpine food range is returning to the UK, with prices starting from just 99p.

Highlights include traditional ready-to-bake pretzels, Swiss Rösti, apple strudel-flavour ice cream and Bavarian-style meatloaf… “sure to give shoppers a taste of the Alps”.

All well and good, but I haven’t been in our Lidl for a year because its car park is always by far the most crowded of our local supermarkets.

So, being on the nervous side when it comes to contracting Covid, I prefer to make my own Alpine food. One of the most famous dishes is, of course, the Wiener schnitzel (also being sold by Lidl), which is actually from Lombardy.

“That part of Italy belonged to Austria until 1918,” I was once told by my Viennese friend, Beatrice Aumayr. “There was a gentleman called Field Marshal Rejetzki and he lived near Milan and was served a local dish called Côtes de veau à la Milanaise. He liked it, so when he came home he had the recipe in his luggage and he began to serve it to his friends in Vienna.

“This turned into Wiener schnitzel. What we have added to it is the potato salad for which you need waxy potatoes that you cook in their skins. You make a dressing from corn oil and vinegar with some sugar, salt and pepper. The meat is usually veal, but some people prefer pork because they say it’s juicier,” said Beatrice. “You simply dip it into flour, then eggs, then breadcrumbs.”

Actually, I prefer the alpine dish which, in Austria is known as tafelspitz.

“It is boiled beef – said to have been one of the favourite dishes of our emperor Francis Joseph,” said Beatrice. “You cook the meat in a bouillon with the bones so you get a nice strong stock with vegetables and onions. Then you slice the meat and eat it with spinach and potatoes and apple sauce and horseradish. It is a light meat dish. You can also serve the soup, in which it was cooked, with the vegetables. The waxy potatoes may also have a sour cream and dill dressing. Tafelspitz is a great art-form and is wonderful if you do it well.”

It is indeed.