Cheese, like love, comes in various forms, varieties and tastes but there will always be that ‘one’ which will get you to the core. The one cheese, like a first love that knows exactly what your heart desires and puts a smile on your face after that first bite. For me it was Raclette.
My husband, an incredible skier, decided our kids were at that perfect age to absorb a new skill. He planned a skiing holiday to the French Alps, and perfect as that sounds, I was more excited about acquainting myself with the food.
I had decided a few years back that skiing was not my forte. My first day at Aime La Plagne Club Med was spent promenading on the baby slopes. I wanted to get a feel for my skis, perfecting my ‘chasse neige’ or snow plough and listening to my coach yell out “Lana, where are you going?” as I skied off a tangent instead of elegantly turning. It was also that night, coming in from the blistering cold, fingers and toes seriously and painfully numb, that I got introduced to the smooth, creamy goodness of the distinctive Swiss cheese.
Raclette is a huge, thick yellow pungent wheel of cheese from the Valais region of the Swiss Alps, near the border of France. It is also the name of the dish, where rectangular blocks or half wheels of the cheese are placed on a contraption, under a heat source, when the magic happens. The cheese, with its balanced fat and moisture content, melts evenly without separating or becoming oil. It is then scraped, which in French translates into ‘racler’ (hence its name) onto a pile of baked small potatoes and typically eaten with sour gherkins and pickled onions. It’s truly the ultimate cheese experience.
My favourite part would have to be watching the cheese as it bubbles and sizzles and forms a gorgeous golden-brown crust, better known as the ‘religieuse’ or ‘la croute de fromage’. The idea is to wait until this crispy layer forms before it is scraped with a knife making way for the cheese fondant to be spilled onto your plate. As each layer is cut from the half wheel with the hard rind and soft interior, the cheese starts to look more like a horseshoe. Raclette, the dish, dates back more than 700 years, when it was actually called Bratchas, Swiss German for ‘roasted cheese’. It was mentioned in writings as early as 1921. The semi-hard cheese was easy to transport and was eaten by shepherds and farmers by a hearth or campfire.
So almost every night after a long frustrating day of tackling turns and trying to get up after falling in embarrassingly awkward positions, the pungent heady smell of melting cheese would beckon me for dinner. I loved it so much that I had to purchase Raclette’s special contraption from the airport in Geneva. I then hunted down a fromagerie ‘cheese store’ to buy blocks of Raclette cheese along with accessories such as truffle butter for my olive bread, white balsamic vinegar for baby arugula salad and gourmet slices of nougat. Just a few things to recreate my French Swiss experience.
I would like to finish off by saying that the holy grail of cheese can still be enjoyed warmed on a stovetop. Its consistency of tiny holes makes it real easy to melt. All you have to do is throw a few slices of country-style bread on a sauté pan over a hot fire and top them off with sliced Raclette cheese. If you are looking for a crispy croute de fromage, you can place it under the broiler in the oven. Whip up a fresh baby arugula salad and, voila, you’ve almost recreated the authentic experience.
By Lana Nasser
