Well, fondue is making a big comeback. Sleek new fondue sets and beautifully revived traditional units are gracing the shelves and websites of cookware stores. Generation X is discovering, as I did back then, that fondue is a great vehicle for intimate, easy entertaining. Today's take on fondue brings more choices.
Swiss cheese is the classic, but, with a Latin variation, fondue bubbles to a new beat.
The old-time meat fondue, beef chunks sizzling in hot oil, returns in a safer, fresher version that uses broth instead of oil. And an updated palate of foods to swish through the simmering broth, then into a bright array of dipping sauces, gives both French and Asian touches to fondue. For dessert, caramel-rich dulce de leche moves beyond routine chocolate fondue to another mantle for fruit and cake. The contents of the pan determine the foods to use for dunking or cooking, as well as the peripheral collection of sauces, if any. Multiply the scale of the event simply by duplicating the fondue arrangement at other tables.