Hello, my friends! All right, how many of you have seen The Last Jedi? M. Cheesemonger got us tickets for Sunday morning at 9am, and it was sold out!! People were dressed up and everything, even at that hour!
We are right in the thick of holiday party time, so I partnered with my friends at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco to bring you a holiday gathering meal blog post! What better way to share your love of cheese and friendship than through Raclette? This wintry Swiss-French dish is composed of cheese melted over steamed potatoes, and is accompanied with charcuterie, cornichons, and pickled white onions. It’s the perfect meal to eat in a group because the cheese is melted right at the table, and watching cheese melt makes for a wonderful communal experience and conversation starter.
Our raclette devouring crowd was composed of Cheese Sommelier Chuck Kellner and his wife Kim, our food-loving neighbors Rachel and Alex, and us! This was Rachel’s first Raclette experience. When we first began talking around the table, she said she had made her favorite holiday discovery of the year—eggnog. As soon as the cheese began melting, though, she considered the Raclette with wide eyes as she realized that eggnog might not be her favorite holiday discovery after all.
We recreated traditional Raclette with local/US ingredients. I jumped at the chance to taste some excellent bread by Josy the Baker, so added a loaf of that to the table, although bread is not required. M. Cheesemonger added some extra butter to his potatoes as well.
Raclette for 6, à la Miss Cheesemonger
A generous 2 lbs of Cowgirl Creamery Wagon Wheel (when in doubt, go for more! I got 4 lbs because my raclette maker uses quarter wheels, and that’s how big a quarter Wagon Wheel is. Your quantity could depend on the type of machine you use.)
1 package La Quercia American Prosciutto
1 package La Quercia American Salami
1 package La Quercia American Speck
1 jar Edmond Fallot cornichons
3 lbs potatoes
1 jar mustard
1 head of lettuce
Salad dressing of choice (we go simple with a mustard-olive oil-berry vinegar mix)
Raclette machine
We steamed the potatoes in our Instant Pot [affiliate link] by using the steamer insert. We poured 1 cup of water into the bottom of the Instant Pot, placed the clean, whole potatoes into the steamer insert, sealed the sealing valve, set the machine to “Manual” and set the timer for 10 minutes. Afterward, we let the potatoes sit in the Instant Pot for 20 minutes before taking them out.
For the cheese itself, we used a Boska Raclette Quattro (provided by Chuck!) [affiliate link]. Once the machine was heated up, raclette came scraping hard and fast down onto our plates. Because of the large number of people present, we found it easier to scrape the cheese onto a small plate, hand the plate over to a waiting diner, and let them scrape from the plate onto their waiting potatoes, charcuterie, cornichons, and mustard. If you can scrape directly onto a diner’s plate, though, please do it! Watching melted cheese pour over anything never gets old.
We added a little bit of salad to balance out the hefty cheese and potatoes, and a gorgeous Hungarian wine, Káli-Kövek Köveskál Olaszrizling, recommended by the folks at Bi-Rite. Its acidity and mid-weight mouthfeel paired well with the cheese, and I enjoyed the refreshing fruit bouquet.
What a happy, delicious meal it was!! Chuck and Kim are even considering taking their Raclette machine for Christmas day in the mountians! It’s a pretty low-key cooking experience, and so much fun for groups.
Bonus: For you Francophones out there, one of my favorite French Youtubers has just put out a video about the joys of Raclette!
Thank you, Bi-Rite, for this chance to share Raclette on Miss Cheesemonger! All the ingredients for your own Raclette party can be found at their 18th Street or Divisadero Street locations!
Bi-Rite Market
550 Divisadero St., San Francisco, CA 94117
3639 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94110
This post was sponsored by Bi-Rite Market. I received free product and payment for this article. All thoughts are my own.
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