Reading Raclette

When a guy that likes cheese as much as Daniel over at FussyLittleBlog offers you a chunk of cheese, you say "Yes!" He was even kind enough to drop it off at my office. This particular cheese was a Reading Raclette and sent to Daniel by his cousin who is also really into cheese. I had heard of Raclette and the various styles of grills/tools for melting it, but I had never tried the cheese.

First up, tasting it straight. I got it home cut off a small piece. It's pretty tasty, softer than I thought it would be and had kind of grassy background. I was going to be heading out the door to a meeting in a few minutes, so I cut some more into small pieces and dropped them into a nonstick skillet and melted the cheese. This stuff melts like instant fondue. I had thought about melting some with a little sodium citrate to prevent the cheese from separating but this would clearly nor be necessary with this cheese.

The melted version had less of the grassy background, but was stringy and gooey and delicious. I spread the melted cheese on a slice of Heldeberg Rye and quickly ate it. Then I did it again, this time with a little bit of Löwensenf Extra mustard and headed out to the meeting.

Round two: I not sure where this idea came from, but once I had it, there was no turning back. I sauteed some cremini mushrooms in some butter with a little salt and pepper.

Then I grilled some burgers. While the burgers rested, I melted some Reading Raclette in a pan and then mixed in the mushrooms.
 

The mushrooms and cheese went onto the rare burger (made with our ground beef, I wouldn't eat most other ground beef rare) served with a little bit of Löwensenf Extra on a Prinzo's hard roll. Holy shit, this was delicious.

The last of the cheese was used up on a pizza (of course it was). The cheese is soft, but still firms enough to shred of the grater I use for mozzarella. The pizza had the Reading Raclette, some home made pancetta and dried cherries.

As my own worst critic, I thought the pizza was good, but could have used a little more oomf to make it great. If there's a next time, I think I'd add a little of the Löwensenf Extra and double down on the pancetta. Being slightly less critical, the pizza was still really good and completely gone less than 7 minutes after it was sliced.

Once again, thank you Daniel. I had a lot of fun deciding what to do with this hunk of Reading Raclette and then eating those decisions.