Melting Cheese....

Modern raclette machine

Today I shall write about raclette, a certain nostalgia for Swiss cheeses filters through.  I love cheese, the gooier the better as far as Camemberts and bries are concerned, and the strong smell of gruyere or the raclette cheese will have a profound effect on my nose!  Previous Christmas's my son and I always used to opt for a good fondue, downed with baguette, sweet pickled onions and gherkins, plus tea of course you must always have something acid or hot to break down the cheese.

If you were to go to a Swiss restaurant, the great raclette round of melting cheese would be held against the vertical bars of an open fire giving off the most delicious smell, and then you would either have it on your potatoes, or anything else, charcuterie maybe.

Of course you have to like strong cheeses, no pale insipid cheddars for me, emmenthal which is used with gruyere to make a fondue is also fairly bland, therefore the buying of a decent gruyere is imperative.

Raclette has a history of course, when the farmers in Switzerland took their cows up into the mountain to the summer pastures, this cheese would be ideal round the camp fire.

A photo I took from this year's holiday snap.  The family in Gruyere, where the cheese factory is.

There is a photo somewhere taken just under 40 years ago, with me, Karen at about 4 years old and Marc her cousin sat on the well behind the family, it has not changed from the pretty Swiss town it always has been.