By Peter Butler

“I am from the Swiss canton of Berne. I had been working aboard QEII, finished my duty and headed back to Europe. I found I couldn’t settle, needed some adventure and came to Thailand in 1993 to work at the Montien Hotel. From there I moved to the New World Hotel Kowloon in Hong Kong, then came back to Thailand as Executive Chef at The Rembrandt Hotel. I found a property on Sukhumvit Soi 20 where I opened ‘Chesa’ with my business partner and renowned Swiss Chef Rene in July 2000. Chesa offers the finest Swiss cuisine and the most comfortable dining experience in Bangkok.

Chef Thomas Novak’s Signature Dishe Capuns- Swiss chard dumplings with bacon, onions and
cheese in a creamy sauce, a very traditional farmhouse dish from the Grison area of Switzerland, where almost every house will have its own version. The filling is made of flour eggs and milk , made into a gnocchi style dough. Small cubes of bread, onion, bacon and herbs are sautéed and added to the dough. It’s then cut into bullet sized pieces that are then wrapped in Swiss chard leaves. The sauce is made with a beef or chicken stock with fresh cream and just a touch of but­ter. To finish the dumplings are sprinkled with grated Sprinz, a Swiss parmesan style cheese sliced veal’s liver served with a raspberry-port wine sauce and fried onions and Roesti Potatoes.

Similar veal dishes can be found all over Switzerland but this style, cooked with sliced liver, is more typical of the Ger­man region of the country. The slices of fresh local liver are pan fried with shallots raspberry vinegars and port wine. I use rasp­berry vinegar to cut the sweetness from the port. Served with Roesti potoes.

Raspberries marinated in Framboise liquer served with Mövenpick vanilla dream ice cream
Imported fresh raspberries are marinated in Framboise a raspberry based liquer. The coulis puree is half raspberry and half strawberry. Now that Mövenpick gourmet ice cream, from Switzerland, is available in Thailand I serve a ‘vanilla dream’ with the raspberries.