A few years ago, I had my first exposure to raclette. I was travelling in Europe, and some friends from San Francisco happened to be on vacation at a 'summer house' right on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to stop in and join them for a few days. The house happened to have a raclette set (something I'd never heard of before) and my hosts graciously introduced me to this meal. This is how it went:
-- A bowl of boiled potatoes was passed around the table. One hostess insisted that, by tradition, they should be peeled. The other insisted that, for the sake of health and convenience, the skins should be left on. On this instance, peeling won out. We put a few potatoes on our plates
-- We were each given little individual pans, on which we placed either vegetables or meat. A generous plate of a distinctive melting cheese called raclette was passed around. We layered the cheese on top of the vegetables or meat, and then stuck our individual little pan under a central broiler -- the crux of the raclette set.
-- After our cheese was melted, we slipped our raclette out onto our boiled potatoes and ate it together.
-- This we did over and over again with vearious fillings until we were completely stuffed.
I loved it.
When those friends returned to San Francisco, they decided to get a raclette set, and told me they would be happy to share it. They invited me and my partner over for a raclette dinner, and my partner loved it as much as I did. Their set has a grill on top, which is great for cooking raw grillable things like sliced mushrooms, baby leeks, onion slices, and sausages or other meat.
Recently, we took them up on their generous offer to borrow the raclette set, and we have been on a raclette marathon. We've had four raclette parties already, and a fifth is scheduled for this week. We're averaging raclette once a week.
I've learned a few things along the way about what works well and what doesn't. Here are a few raclette do's and don't's based on my now copious experience...