You may have already stumbled upon this delicious Alpine dish, often a group cooking activity, that you put together yourself from a few ingredients. The ingredients themselves came as a surprise to me, and all sounds delicious, but I have yet to adventure into raclette making, raclette being both “a type of cheese and a Swiss dish based on heating the cheese and scraping off the melted part.”

For this dish, there is a special raclette oven, with a lower and an upper platform, that toasts your cheese, a major ingredient, to the right consistency (or degree of melt). It sits in the center of the table in a group raclette making. I might choose something simpler, and there are suggestions about using a fireplace.

The ingredients are put out for all the participants to choose among to put together their own potato/cheese pies, or that is what it sounds like to me.

If you never heard of Buendnerfleisch which is a an Alpine dried meat, you can join me over here in the corner. I’m sure you can find other thin sliced meats that will make a perfectly good raclette, but this is the preferred one. The same goes for the raclette cheese, and I can imagine a number of more available cheeses that would probably make a good raclette as well.

If you want to do this the preferred way, instructions follow, but I imagine there are simpler ways to create the raclette itself:

Traditional Raclette Recipe
This simple raclette recipe should be the first you try on your raclette grill or raclette melter. For 4 Persons.

• 8 small/medium potatoes
• 1.5 lb. Raclette Cheese
• Buendnerfleisch (cut in paper thin slices)
• 1 jar pickled gherkin cucumbers (cornichons)
• 1 jar pickled onions
• freshly ground pepper
• paprika

Wash potatoes and boil in a pot filled with salted water for about 20 min. Leave the skin on! Test with a knife if the potatoes are done. Keep warm until ready to use in an insulated potato basket. In the meantime remove the rind of the cheese and cut into 1/16″ thick slices using an adjustable wire slicer. Arrange gherkins, onions, and Buendnerfleisch on a platter and set aside until required. Turn raclette on to begin to heat up (allow for at least 5 minutes before using). ForRaclette grills: Each guest takes a slice of cheese, places it in their pan and slides it under the raclette grill to melt. It takes approximately 2 minutes to melt to a creamy consistency and 3 minutes for a more crispier top. In the meantime take a potato, place onto your plate and cut it into a few pieces, remove the pan from under the grill once it’s reached its preferred consistency and hold the pan onto its side to scrape the cheese out, using your wooden spatula. For Raclette melter, each guest prepares potatoes and side dishes on their plates. When the cheese starts melting on the wheel, scrape the cheese onto the plate. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper and paprika.

This sounds like wonderful fun, and maybe someone reading this has tried it. It reminds me a bit of fondue, another group cooking activity, because it takes melted cheese and special equipment and is done as much for the party as for the food.

(Picture courtesy of Benjamin Jopen at flickr.com.)