Raclette is Gouda-nough

Disclaimer: Ability to be accurate was forfeited thanks to cheese pun opportunity. Gouda has nothing to do with Raclette.

Raclette, a dish so important to France and French eating culture that it even has its own Australian .com.au website. My first and only experience with Raclette involved walking around the streets of Annecy in the South of France (ddaaaaaaaarling) after a 9 hour hike in search of food that was going to fill us to the brim. We walked past a restaurant that seemed to be serving literally melting wheels of cheese whose drips were falling onto various foods. It may have cost us our food budget for the week but it was 100% worth it. It may have been the dangerously empty levels of my stomach, but I have never felt so satisfied by a meal as I did by this Raclette.

Me having words with the Raclette - 'Please please just please bypass my thighs I beg of you'

Originally from Switzerland, the French along the south eastern border have taken it on as their very own and it is now considered a typical French delicacy. There are a few ways of eating Raclette, but in my opinion the best is that pictured above.

The name comes from the French word racler, meaning to scrape, making the way its pictured above the most traditional form of eating the dish. According to local myth, a group of farmers found some cheese they had dropped onto the hot stones and 'scraped' it off, discovering it was actually great, and the rest was, as they say, delicious history- (do they say that??). The majority of it being eaten in the mountainous regions of France, it is now recognised alongside the likes of fondue in terms of comfort food, the French eat it predominately in winter after a day on the slopes.

With the cheese one dines on baked potato, gherkins, dry cured meat, sliced peppers, salad greens and onions, which a lot more flavoursome than it sounds, promise.

The Raclette Australia website is surprisingly comprehensive and well updated (it welcomes you to 2015!), which encourages the idea that Raclette has truly found its way over here to Australia.