Cheesy Blessing

If you know me you know I like food. I like making it...I like experimenting with it...I like trying new cuisines and new experiences. This week we tried fondue.

So the background on this one was that I offered to make a lovely friend and her family dinner as they were grieving with a major loss to their family. This lovely friend has made me and my family dinner (like really nice dinners) before, I knew a frozen lasagna wouldn't cut it.
They are a little bit Swiss... so I thought I would try and make some sort of "swiss cuisine". I remembered her talking about a special type of thing called "Raclette" that was her favourite and they would have it for birthdays etc.

I had no idea what it was so of course I googled it. Cue the wikipedia!

Raclette /rəˈklɛt/ is both a type of cheese and a Swiss dish based on heating the cheese and scraping off (racler) the melted part.

{Pretty Fancy contraption!}

So I went to the super market and headed for the cheese section looking for "Raclette" cheese . I had never heard of it. It wasn't in the the mainstream cheese section...but I had some ideas to substitute it with. Thankfully my local New World has a killer deli section..and lo and behold...the exact cheese I needed! One big massive wheel of it! I literally did a dance!

I put together a platter of cured meats, and pickled veges as well. I also added parboiled new potatoes and good ol' broccoli and cauliflower. And I cannot forget the french baguette. I made enough for our dinner too...in the hopes of trying a fondue type thing. So our dinner was half prepared too. 

I arrived at their place...and looked forward to the reaction. Had I really pulled off a cuisine I had never tried my self before?? They assured me I had! The special Raclette cheese was a winner...because they hadn't had any in years.  Yay! So good to be a blessing. 

I told them my plans to use the same ingredients I had left over at home to try and make a fondue. I had really no idea how to make it. I was just going to put a bit of cheese in my chocolate fondue set. They insisted that I took home their Swiss fondue set all the way from Switzerland ..and my lovely friend gave me the recipe and some of  the ingredients to make it as authentic to the Swiss way as possible!

Heres the recipe if you want to try it at home.

300g  Grated Cheese. We used Gruyere cheese and Mild. You can use Colby too.  

2 cloves of garlic cut finely

1 small dash of "Kirsh" cherry liquor

75 mls of white wine

and 1 teaspoon cornflour to thicken sauce. 

pinch each of pepper, paprika and nutmeg

Adjust your quantities depending on your family/party size. This was enough for the five of us

Before cutting the garlic clove, rub it all over the inside of the pan.

Stir cornflour in to the kirsh set aside.

Melt the cheese and wine and stir in the pot for a while then add the kirsh and keep stirring until fondue is smooth and bubbling. Stir in pepper, paprika and nutmeg. 

Transfer to fondue stand if you have one. 

And dip in some baguette that has been cut into squares.  

This was such a fun thing to do for dinner. Lucky for us we are cheese heads...so this is right up our alley. A BIG note is that in order to ward off the constipation that will occur after this meal...is that the grown ups need to pair this meal with some white wine...and the kids need some other acidic drink...they had to have orange juice.

I love those times when you decide to bless someone and then you get blessed your self! Such a fun treat!