Malakoff - Swiss Deep-Fried Cheese Sticks

Keywords:	Deep Frying Fun ¦ Cheese ¦ Swiss cuisine ¦ Traditional ¦ Calorie Bomb ¦ Gravebait
Translations:	Español
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Regular readers of FXcuisine have enjoyed reading about deep-fried calorie bombs, such as the Neapolitan Deep-Fried Pizza and its Scottish cousin or the Deep-Fried Candy Bar. Today let me have a dose of my own medicine and introduce the malakoff, a specialty from my homeland, Switzerland.

This recipe is said to have been brought back by Swiss soldiers who were drafted by the French in the Crimean War, a military adventure in the fine tradition that later fostered WW1 and the Iraq Debacle. The recipe commemorates the taking of Malakoff in 1855 in the Ukraine. It is a very typical recipe of the canton of Vaud on the Northern shores of Lake Geneva.

Malakoff [mahlah-COUGH]
Swiss deep-fried cheese sticks
300gr hard cheese*
1 bottle white wine (Swiss if you can find it)
2 eggs
150gr flour
Salt
Oil for deep-frying
A strong stomach

*The cheese you choose should have no holes, not break easily but still melt properly. Here I used alpine meadow, unpasteurized Etivaz-type Gruyère, that's the Bentley of cheeses. But you can do this with other cheese types.

Ask the cheesemonger to cut the cheese at least 0.5''/1.25cm thick. Remove the crust and slice carefully in sticks of equal size. Please note that this dish is sometimes prepared with cheese slices to make a sort of deep-fried cheese steak.

Put the cheese sticks in a plate and cover with the white wine. Cover and let marinate for one hour at room temperature.

Meanwhile, prepare the batter by mixing 150gr flour with 2dl/200gr white wine.

Whip until no flour lumps are visible and you have a smooth but thick batter. Add flour if the batter is too runny - we want it to stick to the cheese.

Cover and let it rest for one hour.

Beat stiffly 2 egg whites and incorporate delicately to the batter once it's rested.

Discard the wine used to marinate the cheese sticks and pat them dry. Roll them in flour until the sticks are no longer sticky. This is designed to let the batter better stick to the sticks.

Heat your oil to 190C°/375°F - that is, very hot.

With a pair of kitchen pliers, dip a cheese stick in the batter ...

... and gently drop it into the oil. Instant karma alert - if you don't do it gently, the oil will spill and burn you.

Fry until golden brown, then remove to a huge pile of kitchen towels to try and absorb as much of the frying oil as possible. It is possible that your sticks stick to the basket. In that case leave them until fried through, remove the basket, let it drip and only them proceed to unstick the fried sticks. Otherwise you'll just break the batter and they'll fill with oil. Very nutritious but not hugely healthy.

Serve as an appetizer, with a salad or a soup. They are really delicious, with the cheese gently melted inside and perfumed with the tart white wine flavor, all in a crispy white wine batter. Maybe you could organize a malakoff-eating contest to see who can eat most?

I've never seen this dish in any restaurant but most Swiss mistake the malakoff with the more common Beignet de Vinzel, a cheese fritter on a slice of bread. Many restaurants put "Malakoff" on the menu but serve beignet de Vinzel and you'll have a hard time convincing a Swiss that they've been calling it incorrectly for their whole life. But if one ends up being the only one to speak correctly, it is probably time to move on and adopt the common usance. But what would we call the malakoff then, if that word is used to speak of the beignet de Vinzel?