Cheesy #SOL24 13/31

Tonight’s dinner will be raclette. The potatoes are already boiled, the cheese is laid out, and the raclette grill is warming. Soon, the whole family will be melting the cheese then pouring its oozy deliciousness over the potatoes. Everyone is excited.

As I prep, I’ve been thinking of the first time I ever had raclette – which was also the first time I’d ever heard of it –  in France during my junior year abroad. My (French, obviously) boyfriend and I had been together long enough that I was finally starting to meet his friends. That day, we drove into the countryside for dinner with a group of people I’d never met before. After aperitifs, we sat down at a table with this odd contraption on it. Small potatoes were piled in bowls interspersed between the guests. Long trays were layered with thick slices of cheese and various cured meats. Here and there were small bowls with cornichons. Everyone was talking and laughing and I had no idea what was going on.

Pause here. Prior to arriving in France that September, I had eaten cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese mozzarella cheese (on pizza) and Velveeta. Surely I had seen brie before, but I’m not sure I had tasted it. I had definitely heard of blue cheese, but all I knew was that it stunk. Similarly, I had never drunk more than a sip of wine and certainly had never had an aperitif. Also, I didn’t exactly speak French. I mean, I had *studied* French, and I did very well on grammar tests. I could even write a reasonable paragraph. I could not, however, actually talk to people. 

So, when I moved in with a family that spoke only French and who cooked only French and Alsatian food, I had had to either figure things out or, I suppose, go home. Then I met Jean-Luc, whose English was also limited, and promptly fell head over heels for him. That turned everything up a notch. 

Now it was maybe January, and I had gotten used to only understanding some of the conversation and not always knowing exactly what I was eating, but tonight I really wanted to make a good impression on Jean-Luc’s friends. I wanted to be part of the gang. But what does one do when seated in front of something like this (see below) and given a tool called a pelle – which I knew darn well meant “shovel”- and a wooden paddle?

At first, no one noticed my unease and, I had become expert at copying those around me. Soon enough, however, Jean-Luc realized that I was a neophyte and started helping me pile various meats on the grill and melting cheese underneath. Raclette, I discovered, was essentially an excuse to eat all the cheesy potatoes you could. It’s not especially refined and lends itself to laughing and chatting as you wait for something to melt or cook – or accidentally take your neighbour’s pelle. We had a fantastic evening. I was hooked. 

My American friends in Strasbourg also discovered this dish, and by June we were all more than happy to go with Erin to a raclette restaurant for her birthday (even though raclette is, at its heart, a meal often served in the winter). There, we saw “real” raclette: a heater brought up to a giant wheel of cheese while a server scrapes the melting cheese onto a plateful of potatoes. 

After I left France, I doubted I would find many places willing to serve melted cheese as a large part of a meal. I was going home to a land of cheddar, Swiss and mozzarella. I knew there was always fondue, but somehow that seemed almost as unlikely as raclette. And, sure enough, none of my friends at home had ever heard of raclette. It became just a delicious memory…

Until I got engaged to a Canadian. We were looking at things to put on our registry (“just in case”) when I noticed the raclette machine. My fiancé was taken aback by my extreme enthusiasm for something which he thought was, well, kind of normal. I tried to explain – France, cheese, years ago – but he just shrugged and said, “well, let’s put it on the list.” So we did. And we got one.

Pretty much every winter we find raclette cheese at the grocery store and drag the raclette machine out of the basement. We boil the potatoes and find the meats; we cut some veggies and, often, gather friends. Then we put the cheese in the shovels and thrust them under the heat. While it bubbles away, we grill the meats and veggies on the warm stone. We scrape it all onto potatoes and eat until we’re bursting. 

I love it every single time. And now, dinner’s ready!