Swiss Bliss.(cheese fondue )

Byline: Photographed by Horacio Salinas.

Cheese fondue has been rediscovered. Jeffrey Steingarten stirs the pot.

Don't blame me, but when you hear how I've spent the last month or two you will become sinfully, wickedly covetous, envious, and jealous. Although you may not realize it right away.

I'm talking about cheese fondue. Specifically, I've cooked up a new batch of cheese fondue every single day, sometimes two. Fondre means "to melt" in French, and fondue means "melted." First you heat up dry white wine in a heavy pan and melt cheese in the wine. You'll probably stir in cornstarch to thicken the mixture and keep the cheese and wine from separating. And you will probably flavor the melted cheese with black pepper and kirsch, a powerful, clear, colorless cherry brandy. To eat the cheese fondue, you'll probably spear a crispy chunk of bread on the prongs of a long, thin fondue fork, swirl it into the cheese, and bear it to the mouth. Prepared with skill and the best of cheeses, fondue is a wonderful treat. Sky King, our peerless golden retriever, prefers his favorite medium-size Milk-Bone dog biscuits dipped into the molten cheese.

A dozen or so Swiss cheeses are highly qualified to play the key role in fondue. There's Emmentaler, which we all once called "Swiss cheese"--the bright-yellow, waxy cheese with large holes, often sliced thin for sandwiches and not a pleasant thing to eat. And Gruyere, a firmer cheese, equally familiar, somewhat darker and drier and with a thicker rind and what's always called a "nutty" flavor. A few years ago, three public-relations women who appeared to know nothing about cheese or, for that matter, about Switzerland came over with samples of the most exceptional Swiss cheeses I had ever tasted, mainly long-aged and "cave-aged" Gruyere and Emmentaler, all of them complex and deeply satisfying, with thick rinds and a firm texture even at room temperature. These are not easy to find in this country, but as I've discovered, it's possible to come close. Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts (888/212-3224), and Ideal Cheese in New York (800/382-0109) had every cheese we needed, and then some. Quality varied cheese by cheese. Artisanal (877/797-1200), also in New York, carries the more unusual specimens.

And then there's the wonderfully tangy Vacherin Fribourgeois, which can stand all by itself in a delicate version of fondue, or half-and-half with Gruyere (whereupon the fondue is known as Moitie-Moitie). Appenzeller, Raclette, Sbrinz, Petit Jurassic (both the cheese and the geological period are named after the Jura mountains in France), Comte, and Beaufort are all used in combination with one another and with Gruyere to compose fondues, although Appenzeller plus cream can make an entire fondue on its own. While I was tasting and mixing these popular Swiss fondue cheeses, I also collected every other Swiss cheese I could find (plus mountain cheeses from neighboring France), five or six of them, all with unfamiliar names (like Bunder Bergkase Andeerer and Bergkase Unterwasser, also known as Toggenburger). Most were very good to eat, but because they had the appearance and texture of Gruyere, none seemed an indispensable ingredient in my fondue--except perhaps Hoch Ybrig, which has a grain and taste all its own (and which a friend insists upon including in her fondue); another, Forsterkase, is soft, succulent, and strong-smelling, bound by a thin hoop of fir bark, but not intended for fondue.

And while I stood bestride the narrow world of Swiss cheeses I diversified, with several luscious batches of fonduta (often confused with fondue, especially by the French), a delicate, even fragile cream prepared with the best and most odorously fermented Fontina d'Aosta, a cheese produced in the highlands through which you drive when you emerge from the Mont Blanc tunnel into sunny Italy. Fonduta contains milk or cream and eggs but no wine, and when you eat it, a little dish of fonduta covered with papery slices of white truffles, as I did recently at Alto restaurant in Manhattan, you will think you're in Heaven, and nobody will be able to persuade you otherwise. Alto's chef, Michael White, splashes a spoonful of strongly concentrated veal stock over one edge of his fonduta, which successfully cuts through the richness of the cheese and eggs while adding a pungent richness of its own.