Retrenching. I was never a fan of take-away nights….

I am all for easy suppers and evening entertainment but never from a box. Ah Raclette, I’d happily retrench on a poor but communal night with a few tranches of this cheese.  Cut a furrow, dig a ditch, fortify uncompromising aspiring and economizing appetites at home by buying some slices, being delighted with the prices and raising arms and hot pans against a city of take-aways. What waste-aways, brown bagged evenings, disposable containers and straight into the bin. What’s the fun, where's the build, the bud or the bone? Not even the dog to lick it. Ditch it. I’d take a carton of wine before I’d take that complementary can Diet.

So let us look again at our pocket books, our portions, our diaries and priorities.  Let us taste an evening, a glass of wine, a sip of company; let us not think we have no time for cooking but, instead of what we can do with that time we have for eating. Let us think.  Let us eat. Bless...

Me, I am not some devotee mourning the loss of them good old days, but I am a fan of them ingenious old ways. My mother lived on sushi in NY or evenings of wine and cheese but it was that bowl of soufflé shared with spoons that still sits warm in her memories. Or Bargeman stews left to cook for hours between catches and caches of ports, passed on to studious students with bubbling pots leaving licks of broth and greasy spots upon their studied pages and discussion tables. Time. Thought. Transferred tradition.

To Raclette, its origins were around the cow herders' fires on the Swiss mountains.

Creative Commons GRCampbell

The cheese was opened and aimed toward the flames.  Under the bright light and the licking heat the outermost part of the cheese brought to a bubble until - ready, it was scraped off, caught on to a plate of boiled potatoes and accompanied with some cornichon and meat. Sweet. And then times move on...

To the present day, with machines, some more elaborate than others to warm a simple Raclette.

Perhaps less ready to commit? It is not the same, but I have improvised with the grill, a blini pan and an oven mit.

Raclette, the scraping off (racler, to scrape) of the cooked cheese gives it its current name. Slices of it are known as tranches (trancher, to slice), the individual plates the cheese is heated on are known as coupelles. The preparation is called modest planning and the evening is called Good.

Creative Commons,  GRCampbell

Raclette is a very fun and simple way of hosting a supper.  The cooking device shares its name with the cheese.  The cheese, fromage a Raclette or Valais Raclette is made in both Switzerland and France. French Raclette is a bit softer, milder and creamier in flavour than Swiss Raclette.  In Ireland the former is more readily available.  Just as you meet more French here, so will you meet more of their Raclette. Marcel Petit has a very good one. Swiss Raclette can be richer in flavour but is harder to find. An Irish alternative is Durrus.

Instructions:
What you need after the Raclette (the cooking device and the cheese, trimmed into thin slices around 200 grams per french person) are good firm potatoes suitable for boiling (i.e.. Charlottes), cornichon and pickled onion, dried meat, black pepper, paprika (maybe), a Savoie or Fendant white wine (definitely), some friends and a long evening…

I was never a fan of take-away, unless it was an evening that took me away. 

Dublin residents: Raclette is available at Sheridans, Fallon&Byrne and sometimes Lidl or Aldi will do promotions (not the same quality). Additionally there is/was (?) rumour of a new presence at the Irish Village markets doing an Irish Raclette with Coolea, Le Petit Camion