Did you say Laughing Lemon?

In 2004, Jack McNulty, who is half Irish-American, half Moroccan, opened Laughing Lemon Food & Wine in Zurich with his Swiss wife, Silvia Gautschi. His cooking credentials range from culinary arts degrees to restaurant experience in Italy, France and Switzerland, as well as several advanced certificates in chocolate. Her wine qualifications include a passel of tasting certificates and professional experience in sales and consulting for Globus, the Swiss department store known for their fine food and wine sections. She also earned qualification as a sherry instructor at the Sherry Regulation Body in Jerez, Spain, and teaches regularly at the Académie du Vin throughout Switzerland.

The couple’s business is based on strong convictions about fresh, seasonal, sustainably grown food and wine and puts that passion at the service of its customers in the form of cooking classes, tasting classes, team-building through food and wine, catering and home cooking, publishing their own cookbooks and maintaining a website larded with useful  tips and information.

I caught up with Jack and Silvia to find out more about them and Laughing Lemon.

How does a Californian in telecommunications meet up with a Swiss mental health nurse, get married, and start a business called Laughing Lemon?

J. M. Sometimes I guess luck and fate are just with you. We met in Berkeley, California, during the mid-90’s while I was planning my career change and Silvia was learning English. We met in a friend’s café, but neither one of us was directly involved in the food and wine business at the time.

About a year later, I left my management career in telecommunications, sold everything I had and left for the New England Culinary Institute in Burlington, Vermont. It was quite a transition - much more difficult than I’d anticipated. Silvia and I remained in close contact.

I completed my first six-month internship in a fantastic restaurant in Zurich and our relationship continued to blossom. I loved working in Europe and just dove right into the food culture, which I considered quite different from America’s.

My second six-month internship took me to Italy and this time Silvia joined me. During our stay in Alba, she had the opportunity to learn about wine from one of Italy’s top sommeliers. She was hooked, and when we returned to Switzerland I continued to work in restaurants and she started studying wine - and we got married.

Silvia eventually completed the Wine & Spirits Education Trust’s degree program in London, graduating as the top German-speaking student in her year and becoming one of the first ten in Switzerland to earn such a degree as a wine educator.

We were thinking of opening a small restaurant in Zurich, and almost did - several times. But eventually we decided that the atmosphere and financial realities of running a restaurant in Switzerland were not suitable for us. Besides, we were completely unknown in the Zurich market and doubted if anyone would relate to ‘Jack and Silvia’s place’…

So we began to search for alternatives, which led us to the concept of Laughing Lemon Food & Wine… We came up with the name while we were putting together a business plan for a restaurant. We saw a greeting card with a laughing face on a lemon and somehow it stuck. The next day, as we discussed names for our business, we remembered that image, and voila!

It made a lot of sense; we wanted to portray an image that was fun and fresh - our food was fragrant, colorful, flavorful and of course fresh! A laughing lemon was an accurate depiction.

I see that this season your classes are devoted to cooking seasonal; finger food; and making pasta and sauce. Tasting courses include an intro to Swiss wines. The classes are all in English, but your website indicates that you have plenty of German-speakers registering too and the classes are full. Tell me about the classes - who attends, and why this great interest?

J. M. We conduct four or five classes each month. I take on the cooking classes, Silvia has a couple of wine classes, and we do a couple of classes jointly. They are popular in Zurich with the English-speaking community, but also increasingly with the German-speaking population.

All of our classes are conducted in English, but we also do a lot of private classes in German. Our emphasis is on remaining fresh and offering our professional knowledge in an environment free of marketing influences. We want our customers to have a chance to learn about the culture of food and wine in Europe in an independent and seriously fun environment.

We also like to keep our class size to a minimum - usually between eight to ten people - so the personal touch isn’t lost.

We’ve really enjoyed the past five years, and know we’ve had a positive influence on quite a few expats and locals. It is such a bonus to run into our customers at local markets and see how excited they are to shop in such a fresh environment.

Are the classes your core activity, or are other services equally as important to your business?

J. M. Our classes are not our core business activity. Our private dinners, private events and catering services represent the main portion of our business, but everything is driven from our deep desire to educate our customers on the benefits of local, sustainable and seasonal food - matched of course, with appropriate wines.

Did your business take off right away in 2004 or has it been a gradual process? What would you say the growth of your business is due to - advertising, word of mouth, staying power, is there something in the Zeitgeist that just draws people to food and wine, are they out there seeking opportunities and services such as you offer?

J. M. We definitely planned for a slow and deliberate growth of our business right from the beginning. And we were right. We always felt if our business idea was sound, then our customers would voluntarily spread the word within their world. That idea can only succeed if you offer customers something helpful, good value…something we’ve been fortunate enough to accomplish during the past five years.

Has the recession affected your business adversely, if not yet do you think it will? Perhaps positively: taking a cooking course is a treat but not as expensive as, say, a trip…

J. M. …It’s probably too early to answer that effectively. We have seen a bit of a downturn with companies doing team events, but we’ve also seen a significant upturn in private group events… People will of course become cautious about spending their disposable income if conditions worsen, but we think these times are also a great opportunity to provide even more education on learning how to cook, and on shopping more effectively.

Do you have any interesting things in the pipeline - plans for expansion, new courses, new books?

J. M. Yes…our pipeline is always full. Late last year, we introduced our Fresh Chocolates business in a sort of beta release manner. Which is to say we began to sell some of our freshly made chocolate pralines on a very limited basis in several locations throughout Zurich.  This was actually a test for us…something we wanted to get more involved in and see what the reaction was to fresh chocolates. So far, the reaction has been positive and we hope to pursue this vigorously in 2009 and offer more in the way of education and fresh chocolate alternatives. We are also writing more about food and wine in blogs and in some other publications like Silvia’s wine articles in Inside Switzerland Magazine.

Turning now to food and wine:

Silvia, I am often surprised by how little the Swiss seem to know about their own wines. Many don’t seem to fully grasp that Switzerland is a wine-producing country. Very few know that there are six official regions, by size: Valais, Vaud, Geneva, Ticino, Swiss-German including Graubünden, and Neuchâtel/Three Lakes, which includes Jura. Those who do have some idea, including many merchants and restaurateurs, often have prejudiced and outdated notions about wines from other areas of the country. They will make derisory remarks but they haven’t got a clue. The fact that Swiss wines win tons of the most prestigious international wine medals, or are a strong wine list feature in Michelin-starred restaurants, or are sold by exclusive niche merchants in the US and UK, apparently escapes them. The wines you’re seeing in these instances come from all the regions without exception. All of this is not really out there, not in the consciousness of most Swiss, much less of most expats. Yet anyone with an overview of the true situation would be giving a very different picture of Swiss wines than the usual ‘Valais is best, followed by Vaud whites, etc’ routine. How do you deal with this in your courses so that participants get a truly savvy overview and drop outdated prejudices if they have them?

S. G. We simply serve them some great Swiss wines. That usually does the trick! In my introductory class to Swiss wines, we take a close look at the entire Swiss wine world, moving from a historical perspective to discussing the growing conditions in Switzerland and understanding how the wine is priced. We try to provide a good representation of all of the major wine-producing regions in Switzerland and offer wines from those regions to compare and contrast. The wines we concentrate on are not strictly from the Swiss-German side of the world. We do include some great wines from Ticino and of course from the western parts of Switzerland. We even try to come up with a surprise or two… It is always interesting to see perceptions change so dramatically after just a few hours. But that’s how to get to know Swiss wines…it requires work, research and effort to get to know the top producers.

Jack: by definition, since you are into seasonal food, you are into local produce. Are you also into local cooking, traditional Swiss dishes? Do you believe there is renewed interest in traditional Swiss food?

J. M. I am really interested in food traditions, and that very much includes Swiss traditions. I often research old cookbooks, which provide very interesting insights into past and current traditions.

I wish I could say there is a renewed interest in traditional Swiss food, but that is probably not true. I do think there are some interesting Swiss chefs, who are seriously upgrading some classics, and I think these classics will eventually make a comeback.

I also think there is a strong interest on the part of expats to find out more about traditional Swiss cooking. But unfortunately, most exposure to these traditional foods are in restaurants which serve convenience versions and leave a bad impression. It is gratifying, though, to teach someone how to make dishes like rösti, tarte au fromage, and spätzli.

What cooking styles are your personal favorites, and what about customer preferences? Can you give us a recipe?

J. M. My culture, education and professional experience are very much Mediterranean influenced, so it’s not much of a surprise when I say this is my cooking style. I really enjoy…the foods around the Mediterranean, the interesting flavor combinations, the elegantly simple presentations, and the absolute desire for, and commitment to, freshness. This is what we try to convey through our business. I believe freshness is at the core of our customer preferences.

Recipe

Bärlauch Dumplings

Dumplings are very similar to gnocchi or spätzli. In this case, I have used a basic choux pastry recipe, added some chopped Bärlauch [ail de l’ours, wild garlic] and poached them rather than baked them. They produce wonderfully light gnocchi-like dumplings, which can be added to a soup or tossed with a sauce. Other herbs can be used instead of the Bärlauch, but since it’s spring… This recipe makes about 30-50 small dumplings. [Wild garlic is available in local markets in the spring, starting about now.]

1 dl water

60 gr. butter

60 gr. flour

2 eggs

1 tbsp. Dijon mustard

½ tsp. salt

2 tbsp. chopped Bärlauch

1 tbsp. chopped chervil

Place a pan with parchment paper in the refrigerator to chill. Combine the butter and water in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. When the liquid is simmering and all of the butter has melted, pour in the flour all at once and stir vigorously over low heat, until the batter holds together and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Stir in the eggs, one at a time, adding one only after the previous one is completely incorporated. Work in the mustard, salt, and herbs. Fit a pastry bag with a 1 cm tip. Add the dough to the bag, and gently squeeze out portions into a pot of simmering water. The small dumplings are done when they float to the top. Remove from the water and toss with your favorite sauce, or reserve to include in a soup.

More at www.laughinglemon.ch; blogs at freshattitude.laughinglemon.ch.

Photo courtesy of Laughing Lemon Food & Wine, Zurich