06 January 2009

Raclette

Happy new year everyone! I hope all of you had a nice holiday!

I spent Christmas with my family in my hometown Bielefeld. It was my first gluten-free Christmas and my Mum arranged a great Christmas dinner: Raclette!

Raclette is really perfect for celiacs. Everybody has his or her own pan and most of the ingredients are fresh and raw.

Traditionally, Raclette is a Swiss dish. The Raclette cheese is melted and scraped onto everyone’s plates. With the Raclette grill, you can melt a slice of cheese in your little pan and enjoy it on top of your arranged food.


Well, we do it a bit different though. We heat everything in our little pan with a slice of cheese on top and enjoy it. In addition, our Raclette grill has a hot plate where we fry meat, prawns and bacon.


There really is no limit to the ingredients. You’ll discover quickly what you like. The most important ingredient is however the cheese. If you can’t find Raclette, I’m sure any other meltable cheese will do (I’ve tried it with Gouda before and that worked well).

Some suggestions:

Raclette cheese (500g per 2-3 persons)
beef tenderloin, cut into bite-size pieces
pork tenderloin, cut into bite-size pieces
chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
dried dates wrapped in half a slice of bacon (Altough I can’t have the dried dates because of the high sorbitol content, I still enjoy the bacon.)
prawns
pre-boiled patatoes
capsicum, sliced
corn
mushrooms, sliced

If you like, you can serve some bread with the Raclette. But in my opinion, you really don’t need it! (The little white bowl with bread in the back of the picture is my gf bread).
Some people also have pickles with the Raclette.

In Germany, Raclette is actually pretty famous on New Years Eve. So we enjoyed Raclette again on New Years Eve. And we’ll probably do it a couple of times again this winter!

Raclette is a very social thing. Just get some friends over and get started!