A nice Christmas meal

I would like to start by saying that this will be a recipe for a full dish, so it will be slightly different than the other posts. Recently and despite COVID, I have been travelling among different countries where cheese is quite a big part of the eating culture and daily routine. Italy, Germany and Switzerland inspired me to write a blogpost about an amazing dish that my family and I tried over Christmas dinner.

Thanks to my kind boyfriend, we tried French Raclette with actual French cheese. For those who do not know this dish, it involves mainly vegetables, meat and loads of cheese. The core of the dish is eating melted cheese with raw or cooked vegetables, raw or cooked meat and bread Image 1. We divided the process into 4 steps: cooking the vegetables, preparing the raw vegetables, arranging the meat and preparing the cheese.

First step: preparing the cooked vegetables
First we started by preparing the vegetables. In particular, we peeled and boiled the potatoes as well as the cauliflower. Then we baked the sweet potatoes and roasted the radicchio after cutting it into slices (like a steak).

Second step: preparing the raw vegetables
While these vegetables were cooking, we washed the sweet peppers and cut them into slices as well and adjust them in a container. Then we washed another type of salad called “Belga” and arrange it on a plate.

Third step: preparing the meat
At this point, we started preparing the meat. We bought from a local butcher: sausage, thin slices of steaks and prosciutto already cut into slices. We laid the ingredients on different plates and placed them on the table.

Fourth step: preparing the cheese
At this point the side dishes were ready. We needed to take care of the main character of the dish: the cheese. We started by cutting in slices the form of cheese. I suggest to cut them into thin slices so that it will not take for ever to melt. Then, we used a special machine to melt the slices of cheese (as you can see in image 5) which had a resistor on the top and a plate below the resistor to place the cheese to be melted. For each slice it took around 5 minutes to melt and then we used a spatula to pour the meted cheese on the food.

In summary, first we took care of preparing and cooking the food. Then we proceed by cutting the cheese into thin slices. Afterwards, we chose some vegetables and some meat and we placed it on our plates. Finally, we waited for our cheese to melt and then we pour it on the plate.

All in all, I think it is a nice dish to eat when there are special occasion and your are in good company. However, if you like fast meals, I recommend not to try this one. Enjoy!

Just for reference, I will write down the ingredients in case you want to try it out yourself.

Ingredients for 5 people:

• 4 Potatoes
• 2 Sweet potatoes
• 1/2 Cauliflower
• 2 sweet peppers
• 1/2 radicchio
• 1 Belga salad
• 300 gr sausage
• 200 gr thin steaks
• 200 gr prosciutto (ham)
• Bread
• 400 gr Raclette cheese

Gallery

• Image 1 Table filled with Raclette cheese and side dishes

• Image 2 Raclette cheese with vegetables and meat

• Image 3 Raclette cheese with vegetables and meat

• Image 4 Pouring the cheese on the plate

• Image 5 Pouring the cheese on the plate