Champagne Brie Pesto Fondue

One of my favorite family meals as a kid was when we’d have fondue night. It was tasty, but quite frankly, it was fun. A big pot of hot cheese and an assortment of foods to dip, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than that. My mom used to make a family-friendly fondue that was cream cheese based and I’ll be honest, up until a few years ago I didn’t even know there was an entire world of fondue recipes out there. I didn’t know that there were restaurants like Melting Pot that were entirely dedicated to fondue. It wasn’t till I was out of college and was living on my own, trying to feed a fondue craving, that I found out just how many different recipes there are. Over the past few years, I’ve made an assortment of fun fondues, from a Mexican fondue, a Brie fondue, and a Champagne fondue. Dawn and I wanted to try something new so we tried making a Champagne fondue with brie and pesto. Here is a website that I’ve used in the past when looking for new fondue recipes. The recipe we used is loosely based on this Brie & Pesto recipe, but we ad-libbed a bit. The biggest differences we implemented were using champagne rather than the dry white wine and using some Swiss cheese in addition to the Brie.

For those who may have never made fondue before, it’s very simple. Bring the champagne to a simmer then start adding the cheese. You will want to make sure you toss some cornstarch or flour into the cheese to keep it from becoming to stringy. With this particular fondue you will need to make the pesto, which is also very similar. In fact, for those who enjoy pesto on pizza or anything else, save your money at the grocery store and make the pesto yourself at home. Blend about a ¼ cup of fresh basil leaves with a ¼ cup of parmesan cheese, a garlic clove and a ¼ cup of champagne (or olive oil for other uses). Add the fresh pesto to the melting cheese and blend.

The next part is the best part of fondue - choosing your dipping items! I don’t believe there is really any way to go wrong here. Dawn and I chose the following for our meal: apples, French bread, vegetarian sausages, tater tots, steamed carrots, and grilled asparagus. I’ve used many different foods as well, including: berries, meats, broccoli, potato wedges, and almost anything you might have currently sitting in your fridge or freezer. Try to make it fun and be creative.

This blog posted while watching Everybody Loves Raymond.