Most people are probably familiar with fondue. The traditional Swiss meal of melted cheese in a fondue pot being eaten with baguette bread. While this well-known meal is both diligence and a very social way to have dinner with others, there is another conditional Swissvale date may be less familiar with, or perhaps it never heard of it all. Raclette. Though this meal has not been very well-known in the US and Canada, in recent years it has experienced a surge in popularity. So what is raclette? Take a look.
If you haven’t guessed, raclette is another cheese-based dish. That is actually the name of the cheese, and it is a fairly mild, semisoft cheese from Switzerland that melts easily. The term is also a reference to the way the meal is prepared by using a tabletop heating element to melt the cheese on order, along with a variety of accompanying food.
The legend of how raclette came to be is quite simple and quite believable. It is believed that Swiss herdsmen would settle down next to their campfires in the evening, restaurant of the cheese nearby to the point of it melting, at which point they would scrape it onto their bread to eat. Today’s raclette meal is fundamentally not all that different, though fortunately you can enjoy it inside around the dinner table rather than around the campfire.
Today’s raclette ovens are quite simple and efficient, allowing many people to prepare their mail at the same time. However, as a child I watched my parents and grandparents having a traditional raclette meal where a half a wheel of raclette cheese was placed on what looked like a deli slicing machine. However, rather than slicing the cheese, a heating element would be lowered close to the exposed surface of the wheel. As the cheese began to melt and bubble, the raclette master would scrape a layer of melted cheese onto a plate and pass it to the hungry guest. While this was quite charming, it was also quite slow. It took forever for your turn to come around again. In today’s fast-paced society, I don’t know how many people would be tolerant of this method.
Today’s raclette machines work more like a toaster oven, or a mini pizza oven set in the middle of the table. I say keep the oven because each person is given their own small, nonstick tray on which they can place a slice of cheese. From there, they proceed to put the tray under the heating element and wait for their cheese to bubble. When it’s ready, you take a wooden scraper, scrape the cheese onto your plate next to some boiled new potatoes, crack a little fresh pepper on top and enjoy.
The traditional raclette machine holds either a quarter or a half round of cheese. The cheese is secured onto a small platform and an arm with a heating element is cantilevered over the cheese. The heat softens and melts the cheese which is scraped onto plates using a raclette knife.
Here’s some information about raclette: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette