Switzerland: Maluns / Slow-Fried or Scrambled Potatoes from the Graubunden

Maluns* (sometimes called Bündner kartoffelribel in German, or the dialect name Hoba) is a serious comfort food to many people who come from the part of Switzerland where it's most often now made -- the Grisons or Graubunden in the south-east of the country, Switzerland's biggest canton. The dish has the Alps in its bones, speaking, as do so many of the local specialties, of a place where the lifestyle in past centuries was difficult: where you made the best of what you had when the snows set in hard, or spring was taking forever to arrive. Here you can just imagine some pensive cook in a tiny chalet staring at the last few leftover boiled potatoes and a little flour, and a firkin of the local butter or the lard from the last pig they killed, and thinking, "Hmmmm..."

This is not a dish for the calorie-conscious. The butter or lard involved (some versions call for both) will not be just a spoonful or so. So be warned. (The recipe below uses herb butter, which is readily available in Switzerland and makes the dish a little more interesting).

It should also be mentioned is that it takes forever to make maluns... or at least, it feels like forever while you're standing there stirring the stuff. It's like old-fashioned polenta: there is no way to hurry it up. (And unlike polenta, it doesn't seem likely that any enterprising Swiss convenience-food maker will come out with Quick Maluns any time soon. In fact, the concept just feels vaguely illegal somehow.)

The method is simple. You grate the pre-boiled potatoes. (They have to be boiled a couple of days previously and allowed to cool: this causes some of the starches in the potatoes to start to convert to sugars, which helps the potatoes form up into the desired "crumbs.") You stir the grated potatoes together with the flour and salt called for in the recipe. Then you melt the butter in a heavy iron frying pan, sprinkle in the potato mixture, and start stirring. And you keep at it for at least half an hour.

Over the course of that period, the potato mixture first turns into an unpromising-looking sludge. But then this starts to break up into little balls or crumbs. These start getting a beautiful toasty brown. Finally they start to get actively crunchy... which means they're just about ready.

In a hotel or restaurant in Switzerland, the maluns usually arrive from the kitchen with a bowl of sharp apple puree on the side. You dunk the forkfuls into the puree, and in between, take long cool drinks of whatever cool white wine has been recommended to you. (There are people, usually from the older generation of maluns- eaters, who suggest that the only proper drink for this dish is milchkaffee, the heavily milked coffee beloved of the Alpine regions. Probably it would be disrespectful to start an argument with them on the subject.)

This is not a fancy dish. The most that will be added to it is some cheese on top (usually a local Bergkaese) and possibly some slices of a good local sausage on the side. But for many people -- Graubuendners and others -- maluns is something they would go miles to eat. Comfort takes strange shapes sometimes...

To make maluns for four people, you need:

• 1 kilogram / 2.2 pounds potatoes, parboiled two days previously
• 350 grams flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 100 grams herb butter / margarine
• Shavings of butter or margarine to finish

Peel the parboiled potatoes and grate them on the coarse side of the grater. Sprinkle over them the flour and salt, and stir together lightly.

Heat the butter and add the potato/flour mixture to the pan. While keeping the heat low and steady, stir almost constantly until the potatoes form large "crumbs" and are golden brown. Don't overdo them! They're meant to be only slightly crunchy on the outside, and tender on the inside.

When the maluns is done, shave butter over the top before serving. Serve with milchkaffee (half and half milk-and-coffee) or a cool white wine, with applesauce on the side -- a sharp or tart one is best.

(This recipe was adapted from Bewaehrte Kochrezepte aus Graubunden [Tested Recipes from the Graubunden], a charity cookbook produced by the Chur chapter of the Swiss Women's Institute, and was translated by EuroCuisineLady.)

*The word maluns is distantly descended from the Latin micula / miculones: "little crumbs."  Over many centuries it has been worn down from Latin into the modern Swiss Romansch word through a number of different forms -- mig’luns / migluns, micluns, maleums. (See this Italian-language linguistic source for more info.)