Raclette

This past Saturday, November 15th, I had the pleasure of having dinner with an Au Pair friend, and her boyfriend and host family.  She has been in France since January, so this was her "Au Revoir Dinner" as she is leaving France this coming Friday.  We had Raclette for dinner, which I am so excited to tell you guys about!

Raclette is both a type of cheese, and the name of this traditional swiss meal.  I didn't take any pictures during the meal, which I'm now regretting, but Google Images and I are going to do our best to explain this amazing meal that I had kept hearing about but just now got to experience.  

The closest thing I can compare it to is fondue.  According to Wikipedia, in the olden' days people used to heat the cheese up over a fire, and then scrape the melted cheese onto the rest of their meal.  These days however, you have a fancy little machine, that looks something like this:

(This is from the internet, but is actually quite similar to the meal I had)

(Honestly though, heating up over a real fire sounds like a lot of fun.)

So, you start by putting a little slice of cheese onto your personal platter, called a coupelle and then you stick that into the little machine, as shown above.  It heats up, and when it is bubbly and all melted, you take it and pour/scrape the cheese onto your food.  It seems like most commonly you have potatoes, meat, bread, and vegetables.  You can also grill your vegetables on top, or add them to your cheese and melt it all together.  We had different forms of deli meat, ham and salami, but it seems like the options are really endless.  I'm not even a potato lover, and the cheese melted on top of these potatoes were wonderful.   

It was definitely a social meal, everyone going at their own pace, heating up cheese, eating a portion of their meal, heating up more cheese, and so on and so forth.  It's a winter meal, so it makes sense that I am now just having it for the first time.  After I told Sophie and Andrea that I was having raclette for dinner, they informed me that they have a raclette machine as well, so hopefully I will get to have it again soon! 

A meal based off of cheese, with wine freely flowing...someone tell me what could be better?