Valentine's Fondue

I hosted Crystal for dinner at my apartment for Valentine’s Day. I decided to try something new to me that required a lot of preparation. I went for fondue. Instead of having four courses like my family and I do at the Melting Pot, I went for two fondue and one salad course.

We started with a Cheddar Cheese fondue. I found a recipe online that imitates the cheddar fondue at the Melting Pot. It calls for: 6 oz cheddar (I used Kroger sharp cheddar), 2 oz Emmentaler swiss (I could not find cheaper Emmentaler so I used a nice Gruyère), 2 tsp chopped garlic, 2 tsp mustard powder, 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 Tbs flour, and 4 oz Coors Light. It tasted amazing and was very close to the Melting Pot fondue. For items to dip in the fondue I had: green apples, cauliflower, carrots, sourdough bread, and multi-grain bread.

At the same time, we had salads. I tried to imitate the mushroom salad that the Melting Pot used to have. It didn’t turn out as successful as the fondues. I used regular button mushrooms and they didn’t taste very fresh. I made a dressing out of white wine vinegar, garlic and chipotle olive oil. Again, this just didn’t have the flavor that I was going for.

We took a break after the cheese fondue to digest. We watched an episode of the TV show Supernatural. Once we felt like we had more room in our stomachs, I prepared the chocolate fondue. This recipe called simply for 4 Toblerone bars and ⅔ cup cream. To dip in the chocolate, I had: strawberries, angel food cake, clementine oranges, and marshmallows. The oranges were my own idea and they were fantastic in the chocolate.