The boy will likely prefer Totino's pizza rolls.

My 70s cookbook (the one from which the brains au beurre noir recipe came) has a recipe for Raclette, which consists more or less of "Melt Raclette, scrape up with pickles and potatoes, eat." I thought it sounded highly suspicious. That book is frankly full of highly suspicious recipes. Specifically, I thought pickles with cheese sounded suspicious.

Your version sounds much more delicious.

But, c'mon. It's melted cheese and toast with snacks. What's not to like?

Specifically, I thought pickles with cheese sounded suspicious.

I heartily agree. This sentence, though, is fabulous, if you set aside the thoughts of cheesy pickles. It sounds like a starter for a writing contest. It makes me want to write a murder mystery.

scrape up with pickles and potatoes

No, really, traditional raclette is served with potatoes and cornichons, but the cheese is scraped with the potatoes, not the pickles. I must say, though, that scraping cheese, even well melted, with cooked potatoes is not easy, but who am I to question tradition? Should be served with jambon cru as well, a ham for which we have no equivalent here.

Normally we just slice the Raclette thinly, lay out the slices on a non-stick pan, and microwave for about 45 seconds. Use crackers, melba toast, or croutons (which you can make using same microwave) to scoop up the melted cheese. It's a simple preparation but still enjoyable.

Gruyere is also good for melting, but it comes out oilier than Raclette.

I love cheese.

Any time you need a fireplace to toast your raclette, we have one.

And is this the Highly Secret Redacted Thingy you've been working on? Hmmm?

Is there anything wrong with melting the cheese first? You'd probably like it with the right kind of pickle - cornichons rather than big lumpy dill cukes.

If you want to do yourself some raclette fondue, but do not own a fireplace, they make pretty nice machines for that:
- The "traditional" one (for purists ^_^) which directly takes half a cheeese, and I guess feels more authentic.
- The "modern" grill version with small spatulas (strange to me that this seems to be the word used in english), more generally used though you have to cut the cheese in small slices beforehand.

[Don't recommend any of the online shops and products here, just took those for the pictures]

By the way, pickles (and otherwise acidic stuff) are traditionally used as accompaniment with fondue, taken between cheese intakes, to help with digestion. At least that's the argument given.

Also, as far as white wine is concened, my parents tend to prefer either a Chasselass or a Sauternes to go with raclette, though I can't judge here, since I can't drink alcohol (secret familly shame).

Sigh... every time I think of posting a recipe here I realize how lacking my english culinary vocabulary truly is.
Will have to work on it.

Pickles and pickle relishes go very well with cheese. Sharp cheddar with a little Branston Pickle is just unbeatable. For lunch or dinner on summer weekends I sometimes lay out a tray with a couple of kinds of crackers, three or four kinds of cheese, nibbling-size pieces of raw vegetables, and little dishes of every kind of pickle in the refrigerator. Patrick never complains.

Mary Dell (5), it's permanently altered. The strong smell doesn't come back, but it also doesn't re-melt the way it did the first time.

If I hadn't had raclette (with Jo and Emmett and Sasha, in Montreal), I wouldn't know what all the fuss was about: melted cheese, big deal. It's like the time I served ricotta over sweetened fruit to a dinner party of fans that included Lise Eisenberg. She hadn't had real ricotta before, but she'd seen recipes saying that if you don't have ricotta, you can substitute cottage cheese, and she'd assumed it was comparable. "Damn it," she said. "After this I'm always going to want ricotta."

Doug (6), the existence of raclette makes fondue make sense. Makes it seem inevitable, even.

Russell (7), it was a bottle of Three-Buck Chuck out of the refrigerator, and it tasted just fine. I should have just said "a decent dry white wine," and avoided scandalizing you.

Antukin (10): Chopped green onions or leeks with a little ham would work, though it would be a very different dish. Or, I hypothesize, you could saute some finely sliced shallots in butter until things start to brown, then throw in some peeled sliced tart apples, give them one stir, throw in the raclette to melt, and eat it fast before the apples turn mushy and sweet. I don't know. If I were using something other than peppers, I'd have contrived a different dish.

Mad (11), I'll happily come admire your fireplace, though I'd rather do the cooking in your kitchen.

MD2 (15), don't worry about your technical cooking vocabulary. We can cope.

I also thought the idea of scraping up cheese with cooked potatoes sounded odd, but I figured you'd use a fork or knife to sort of scrape them up together.

Mild dill pickles might be good, if the cheese is salty like Gruyere but not sour like Ermenthaler or some such. And potatoes? That's just Finger Potatoes Au Gratin. Sweet pickles? I don't think so.

I'm just wondering--how did this post get a [REDACTED] logo?

I assume it's a reference to a thread Patrick started over here, whereby statements of your recent actions had been redacted. It was a bit of a running joke on that thread. I think we're still in the dark about what, exactly, you've been up to.

I assume it's a reference to a thread Patrick started over here, whereby statements of your recent actions had been redacted. It was a bit of a running joke on that thread. I still don't know what, exactly, you were up to that had to be blotted from the record, though maybe I missed it.

It's killing us to wait to find out, especially those of us who think we know what you're doing.

Potatoes (I'd advise using rosevals, though my mother prefers to use some belles de Fontenay. Basicaly any kind who'll retain a certain firmness once boiled.) 2 kg
Abondance (or emmental) 300g
Beaufort 300g
Cantal 200g
Lardons 400g
Cream (real cream, none of those "light" stuff please) 125g
Butter
Duck fat/olive oil (My makers curse me for sometime using the later in lieu of the former. You've been warned.)
1 big onion
Dry white wine (I'd say around 1 dl)
Garlic
Salt
Pepper

- Peel and boil the potatoes. The idea is that you don't want them to be perfectly cooked yet. Cut them in rather thick slices.
- Coat a casserole (just to be sure I'm not inducing a mistake here) with the butter and garlic
- Using the duck fat, cook the lardons with a frying pan on low heat (you want to soften the meat, not brown it as in a sauté). Take them off the pan and into the casserole. Keep the juice.
- Use remaining juice to do the same with the onion cut into slivers. Take them off the pan and into the casserole. Keep the juice.
- Saute the potatoes in the remainning juice with added salted wine, let them cook till the wine as been absorbed. Put them in the casserole along with the lardons and onion. Pepper to taste.
- Heat up the oven
- Put the cheese cut in slices on top in the casserole (you might want to reduce the crust a bit, but don't take it all off, that's where the best part of the cheese is after all). Top with the cream.
- Put the casserole covered with some aluminium paper in the oven for roughly twenty minutes. Take the aluminum off and leave it in for around ten more minutes (you want the cheese to remain creamy rather than become crusty).
- Serve.

Pretty easy to cook, real nice if you like cheese, and you have the satisfaction of making people gain weight just by looking at it. What more to ask ?

Feels like I'm forgeting something... grumble.

@Dave Luckett (#25): *blush*
Words elude me. They always do. Need to build a trap.
Gotta catch them all.

It's wonderful...:)

Black Forest Cuisine

More gausthaus oriented than home cooking, but the recipes do make be very nostalgic.

Curiously though, I've never seen them served with raclette. Round here (Brittany) customs seem to vary, but the basics of a soiree raclette are potatoes boiled in their skins, mixed charcuterie (chorizo, different kinds of ham, French bacon - supermarkets sell packs specifically for raclette) and the cheese itself. Good solid winter food: we generally drink red with it.

Incidentally, "raclette" is also the word for the thing you use to scrape ice off the windscreen of a car: after you've spent enough time trying to get burnt-on cheese off the little grill pans, the association of ideas becomes quite powerful.

BUT! I found a blog with awesome pictures of Asterix and Tintin collectibles.

Also, I see that apparently the Corsica story included a send-up of Napoleon (it would have to, I suppose), which I didn't realize when I was a kid.

There's another story there that uses two of my current pet hated words: trialed and surveilled, but which has other disturbing aspects too, and another about the shortage of dissecting cadavers in British medical schools that might spark a few ideas ...

Hard to say. I can tell that you still managed to avoid mentioning what was actually redacted. And for some reason I have this image of you saying something to the effect of "Even if I was the thing, I assure you the game will be much more interesting if I'm allowed to keep playing."

;)

No, it was definitely more interesting. I seem to remember watching the last half of the game from the sidelines, and was rolling on the floor laughing as you managed to change the subject away from the question... heywaitasecond, you're doing it again!

;)

*Gasp!* What is that?

About the biggest blasphemy that I can think of these days is NOT using real whole milk mozzarella cheese on pizza. The difference is night and day.

Then why in hell is it walking?

Doug@6: Raclette in fondue? Another suspicious book! Every version I've seen says 50/50 Gruyere/Emmental, shifting toward Gruyere if you want it sharper. (Crosslink to another thread: most fondue recipes also call for a dash of kirschwasser.) And I had a mixture of English cheddar and aged Gouda, relieved with a Clausen's kosher dill slice, before coming to the terminal; I wouldn't have them in the same mouthful but they alternate wonderfully.

russell@7: whassamatter, don't they have any Swiss wines? (One of the first amazing sights from our Confiction trip was the vines terraced into the basalt steeps of the north shore of Lake Geneva: a row or two of vines, another couple of rows several meters up -- must be a bear to tend and harvest.)

Karen@8: a local shop uses "speck", described as a strong German ham; I keep meaning to get there when they're serving (Saturday winter lunches only, and not all of those) and haven't yet.

Another good companion is grapes. The tartness of the skin and the sweetness of the meat goes well with cheese, especially the sharper ones. I love seedless grapes with a chunk of Cambozola or Gorgonzola (both are smelly, blue cheese types by the way).

That's the field of Condensed Food Physics.

But there seems to be a definition that describes speck as part of the hind leg. If that is right, the meaning has indeed changed when the word entered the English language.

BTW, there is a kind of cheese called Bördespeck, a creamy yellow cheese with a brown crust that is smoke-cured.

And regarding strange cheeses: The Sardinians seem to have outdone the Corsicans, and the Thuringians followed closely.

Jörg

Two things I like to do with cheese sandwiches: pickled onions cut into slices with Cheddar, and mango chutney with Stilton.

Dave: I've never experienced actual English Food prejudice from real French people, only from North Americans and Australians.

When I buy speck at the local (central Texas) mercato di fancifoods, it resembles smoked prosciutto. It is made in the Alto Adige, also known as the Italian Tyrol. Now they do indeed have a population of higher-than-normal (for Italy) Germanic descent, but this stuff is strictly Italian.

And very very good. Just make sure you don't keep it more than a month; the breakdown products smell rather like a catbox.

I first met it while living in Venice; it kept showing up on acquaintances' pizzas. Now, when I go to buy it, the people behind the counter always ask me where I learned about it.

Around here, I can get white stilton with mangos and ginger already mixed in. Great to crumble over a salad, as well as for snacking.

*I have no financial interest in the link above, I'm just trying to increase the level of joy in the world.

Being aware that people do consume the strangest things, I wasn't surprised to read that. And we actually have comparable "foods" around these parts (not elaborating in case those with delicate constitutions are reading this), so I'm not really casting aspersions here.

Still. Just wanted to react ;)

That's probably a pizza with ground beef, cheddar cheese, and just a hint of tomato sauce on it. I doubt it has any of them European cheeses on it.

Blech.

Also, Jörg@47, you've given me a few new goals in life. If I slip the people at Murray's or Joe's Dairy a few extra bucks do you think they could get me something similar?

Personally, I don't mind finding out about casu marzu, since I'm never, ever, ever going to eat any; but I seriously regret scrolling further down and finding the bit about mimolette, which is one of my favorite cheeses.

Patch (53), thank you. That's a pretty good description of the place.

*Which really is a place full of quirky knowledge and wisdom.

My local (for the moment) one certainly will sell you one. I have never been drunk enough to try one.

Never been drunk enough to try that either.

Basically, Scottish chippies are small businesses. You can walk in and say, "please sell me a deep fried Mars bar, pizza, apple, sprig of rosemary, stick of chewing gum, etc, etc," and they'll name a price and do it (you will probably have to supply your own apple or rosemary).

Why not? They're not the NHS; it's not their business to say whether it's good for you to eat it.

The real question is: will they offer you salt and [sauce/vinegar]* with it?

* it's an east coast/west coast distinction which you get offered as standard

Well, I wouldn't expect you to keep them down.

-----
* through its coating of batter...most of these things are dipped in batter before frying. Just like the fish, haggis, black pudding, white pudding, and sausages on the rest of the menu†.

† Yes, including the pizza and the Mars bars‡.

‡ Yes. Really.

Now, that I have had. It's very good - they use a good haggis, and the batter goes well with the dark spicy flavour of the inside.

But it occurs to me that the people who denigrate deep-fried Mars bars do them for two simultaneous reasons:
1. They might be absolutely awful.
2. They might be wonderful, and then where are you?*

Best to avoid it altogether.
-----
* Torn between the social pressures and the tearful pleas of your doctor and a hopeless passion for the food you love, hating yourself as you love it...it's the stuff of tragedy, really.

Go look up 'Scotch Eggs' in a cookbook or encyclopedia.

Methinks it's time for you to give us a sonnet about the Tragedy of MarsBar, Prince of Cholesterol.

11 days before an international move, with a house to pack, a week of work, and kids to care for in the meantime?

Not tonight, Josephine.

In spite of that, my best wishes to you and your family, Abi.

ajay - I have my copy of How the Scots Invented the Modern World in the stack of books next to my bed, and it is a fine read.

If you're country has anything to apologize for, I'd put golf on the list long before deep fried candies.

As for the deep-fried phenomena, we have a bar here in Tucson called the Surly Wench, which boasts that they'll deep fry pretty much anything. Including office supplies on at least one occasion. I have yet to convince myself that trying the deep-fried Mars bar is worth giving up the year of my life it will probably cost me, though.

Wednesday's WashPost Food section had a recipe for Grilled Watermelon Salad.

Oh, and to mix with the "10-minute meals" from the Open Thread, and since that's what I did tonight: A St Felicien with some bread, raisins, prunes and Parma ham.

Given that the Extremely Deli Cheese section has all the expensive (mostly imported) cheeses, including the less usual ones like 'Roaring 40s' Blue, raclette is almost expected. They didn't put up any recipes, though.

Boy, do I wish I could get St Felicien around here.

...

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have to practice a cleansing ritual to cast the shame away, one that'll presumably include sharp things, a platypus and loads, loads of toothpaste... maybe even some half-naked singing of Annie Cordy (don't go there, you've been warned) while running down the street.
With luck I won't have to go that far.

But what I really wanted to report was that, home from Clarion, I've now partaken of the recipe detailed in the post atop this thread. And It Was Good.

It was very very nummy.

*actually, a variation thereof. Sparkling dry white wine, and some slices of smoked ham on the bread as well.