Raclette

When I was a girl, I loved the story of Heidi  and the description of the melted cheese she ate....even though I didn't really like cheese at all when I was young.   Later on, I learned that was raclette cheese, and the Swiss custom of melting it fireside. A cheese originating in the Swiss canton of Valais, home of the Matterhorn, today Raclette is also produced in the French regions of Savoie and Franche-Comté.   I went to a raclette demo at Morgan and York, a specialty wine and cheese shop here in Ann Arbor, and fell in love with the raclette party.   The Swiss now make raclette grills just for this purpose:

raclette grill

Also, Morgan and York rent out the grill, which is what we did for our latest gathering.   The cheese is heated up underneath the grill and you grill whatever you'd like to eat with it on top.   Recommendations include vegetables, shrimp, charcuterie.  The traditional accompaniment for all this cheese is baguette and some cornichons and pickled onions.   For our party this year, we included braseola, pancetta, shrimp and kielbasa.   For vegetables, we had brussel sprouts, parboiled first and halved, asparagus, and small potatoes that had been boiled in very salty water and halved, along with the requisite pickles.  It's supposed to be 1/2 lb of cheese per person and remove the rinds, but that seems like a lot to me.   We didn't remove the rinds.  

To drink, we went with Gruner Veltliner (a white wine similar to sauvignon blanc) because once in the Alps, why not stay in the Alps?  The kids just drank diet coke.  The table was made ready...

I think we got about a pound and half of cheese for 7 people, but we could have eaten more.   We had teenage boys eating with us, so that could explain it.   It's really easy to eat too much cheese when you eat it this way.   We put all the toppings we could fit on the grill and just picked what we felt like putting cheese all over....everyone eats what they want...

One warning however....this cheese, like all really good cheese, is stinky when melted.   To quote one of the teenagers: "This cheese smells so bad but tastes so good!".   Even our fussiest eater loved it: "Anything is even better with melted cheese on it".   The Swiss have it right; raclette is a great winter time activity.