la chasse est arrivee!

We just arrived back from Geneva which is located in the francophone part of Switzerland. We left the sunny weather of Rome for a freezing cold wind blowing right off of a lake. The old city was charming but austere as you might imagine one of the centers of the Reformation would be. Our first stop was to a department store to buy a scarf for Chris. It was so warm inside that we didn't leave for several hours. This wasn't tragic, because there isn't all that much to do in Geneva. We made up for our sightseeing laziness the following day when we spent hours at the archeological site under the cathedral. Remarkably, there is evidence of heating in the remnants of Genevoise structures there all the way back to the 5th century. There is obviously a long history of coping with the cold and I have to think that the cuisine, which focuses heavily on meat and cheese, is clearly necessary to provide an insulating layer of fat.

We had fondue our first night. As much as I love cheese, I am not keen on meals which are made of only two ingredients. The next night I was looking for more variety. After a few months of Roman food I was anxious to have a juicy steak. Roman cuisine features the spare parts of the cow, the so-called "Quinto Quarto" which translates to offal (the similarity of this word to "awful" is no coincindence in my mind). When I told my father this he said, "What do they do with the good parts of the animal?"

When I saw that the menu at Cafe Papon, one of the oldest restaurants in Geneva, included filet, I was elated. Chris was a little concerned that his options might be limited since there was an extensive "Menu de Chasse" and he does not like venison. Apparently it is the season for hunting and the deer have arrived from Austria. Large signs at many of the restaurants in town announced "La chasse est arrivee!" Although he was tentative, Chris' fears vanished when we began our meal. For my first plate I ordered a salad with bacon, a warm cheese in a potato cup topped with rocket and little white things which resembled bean sprouts but tasted distinctly of onion. Chris also received a side of bacon with his pumpkin soup with truffle oil which was likewise excellent. We both ordered the filet, which arrived accompanied by two disks of sweet potato topped with roasted fall vegetables, a bowl of potatos au gratin and a little dense cake which resembled a biscotto topped with two mushrooms. It must have been the several glasses of Gamaret I had already consumed which gave me the courage to try the mystery "cake" inspite of the fact that I absolutely detest mushrooms. I was pleasantly surprised by the little white orbs which were dense and slightly gelatinous but melted in my mouth in a completely unfamiliar way. Given my inexperience with fungi it is probably understandable that I didn't realize at first that I wasn't eating mushrooms at all. My powers of reasoning were considerably slowed by the wine, but after the second bite I became a little suspicious of the strange food. I asked Chris what he thought it was and he swiftly replied, "Don't ask, just eat it." Needless to say, I didn't eat another bite and as soon as I saw that he had finished I called the waiter over and asked, "Que ce que c'est ca?"while gesturing to the remainder of the mystery food. The reply, in French, came through something like this owing to my poor understanding of the language: "Cow blah blah blah neck (waiter gestures to the base of the neck) blah blah blah spine blah blah blah" and then the final phrase which I understood perfectly, "If I had told you that before you wouldn't have eaten it."

I couldn't believe that after all of my efforts to avoid quinto quarto specialties in Rome, I had been tricked into eating some unidentifiable cow part (we are still not sure exactly what it was) in a perfectly innocent-looking Genevoise restuarant. I was happy when the plane touched down in Rome, where temperatures only reach freezing once every five years or so and you always know when you are eating the spare parts of an animal.