Raclette anyone?

Last Saturday evening we were invited to a raclette dinner. I have to admit that I had never heard of raclette before and had to look it up.

According to Wikipedia, is both a type of cheese and a Swiss dish based on the cheese.

It's kind of like fondue, but instead of having a pot of cheese, the cheese is melted on a special grill by each individual. So each person can set the pace of their own meal. The grill that our friend has looks something like this one.

I think it can be served with a variety of foods. Our hostess had it a certain way in France and so that's how she serves it. Basically there are steamed potatoes, gherkin pickles, pearl onions and ham served on the table. Each guest serves their own portions of potatoes, pickles and onions and chops them all together on the plate. The ham can be heated on top of the grill and all the while that this is going on, each guest has already put their hunk of cheese on a server thing and stuck it under the top grill to melt. When the cheese is melted, it is scraped on top of the other foods.

It's pretty fun and quite delicious. Everyone just keeps melting cheese and adding more potatoes or this or that and it just goes on as needed. The grill gets crazy hot and so we're told it is best done during the winter. Heats up the house too much during hotter times.

We were asked to bring wine so after some internet research, we showed up with a bottle of Savoie wine and a bottle of Beaujolais. Apparently Savoie is one of the more traditional wines to have with it and our hostess was absolutely thrilled that we brought some. It was good, but I actually preferred the red with the dish. Of course I prefer reds in general so that could be part of it.

And for dessert, strawberry sorbet. Raclette is pretty intense so it is typically not served with a heavy dessert.

All in all, a very fun evening and I'm always happy to experience a new food adventure.

(And yes, I should have photos to go with all this food, but I don't. Low lighting and well, sometimes I just want to eat!)