Central Europe · Volume 18, Lye, the Purity Myth and the Alp Next Door
Älplermagronen
Graubünden's alpine pastures
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Researched
- 11 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Seasonally cooked by herders with whatever the alp itself produced. The Gotthard Tunnel origin story is repeated everywhere and traceable nowhere; treat it as folklore.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 45 minutes.
Ingredients
- 280 g potatoes, peeled and diced
- 250 g short macaroni
- 1 onion, sliced
- 75 g bacon, diced
- 200 g Gruyère, Emmentaler or Appenzeller, grated
- 100 ml cream
- 40 g butter
- as available apple compote, to serve
- to finish chives and crisp fried onion, to finish
Method
- Cook the potatoes and macaroni together in salted boiling water until both are tender, roughly 10 to 12 minutes, then drain.
- Fry the bacon and onion in half the butter until golden.
- Return the potato and macaroni to the pan, add the cream and half the grated Gruyère, Emmentaler or Appenzeller, and stir over low heat until just combined.
- Transfer to a gratin dish, top with the remaining cheese, and finish at 200°C until melted and lightly browned.
- Serve with a generous spoonful of apple compote alongside, whose sweetness and acidity cut the dish's richness, and scatter with chives and crisp fried onion.
What a modern chef changes
A precisely built gratin and a properly reduced apple element, following Andreas Caminada's own faithful-but-refined approach
Rung 6
Method
- Cook the potato and macaroni separately, timed so both finish exactly together, rather than in one pan where the pasta's own starch can cloud the potato's texture, for a cleaner bite on both elements.
- Buy the alpine cheese specifically, Gruyère Alpage or a genuine Bergkäse, rather than a generic block, the same ripeness-and-provenance principle Obatzda depends on, applied here to a hard cheese instead of a soft one.
- Reduce the apple compote with a little of its own juice over low heat until concentrated, rather than serving a standard, looser shop-bought sauce, so a smaller spoonful delivers the same cutting sweetness the dish actually needs.