Sundays in My City

Those Clever Swiss

The Swiss come up with really awesome stuff. Army knives, Seilbahns, the HR Giger museum, hills alive with the music of cowbells.

Did you know Switzerland has three languages? I'd love to find out how they sing their national anthem. They speak Italian, French, and German, depending on where they live in their little country. And the German they speak sounds hilarious, even to themselves.

Switzerland is the prettiest place I've ever been, and I've been all over. The photo is Grindelwald. We rode up the Seilbahn in this very spot. I remember it was totally silent here. (That particular Seilbahn was just a chair lift, not an enclosed gondola box.)

Aside: NW Montana is equally lovely. So if you are not planning on going all the way to Europe, go to Montana in summer and drive up the mountains to the sun. Glacier National Park is shared by Canada and the US and it's easier to understand people when they talk.




Raklette

Back to Switzerland. I had a little history lesson first.

Long ago, or maybe even today, the Swiss shepherds took cheese with them in their pockets while they herded their flocks across the hills, and at night they'd build a campfire and lay their cheese on the stones by the fire. As soon as it melted, they'd scrape it off and eat it all gooey and warm. These were the french Swiss, and they called this style of dinner raclette, which means "to scrape off."

It must have tasted really good cuz they didn't want to just do it around the campfire, they devised a way to do it in their homes with an ingenious tabletop appliance.

This whole time I know you're thinking, "Neither Grindelwald nor Glacier are Lytha's cities!"

Well the Swiss shared their secret with the rest of the German speaking world (three other countries call German their offical language, in case you're ever playing that trivia game). The French got into it too, with their love of fancy cheeses. Other countries soon followed.

Raklette was picked up and adopted as a Silvester tradition in Germany. We had it this year for Christmas Eve dinner.

It is so awesome.

The grill goes in the middle of the table and has two levels. The top grill is for lying your pieces of meat or veggies, and the bottom layer is for placing your tiny little tray where you are cooking your own personal layered cheese creation. The rest of the table should be covered with bowls containing various meats and veggies and cheeses and sauces, so the possibilities are endless and you cook your individual creations, one after another. This goes on for a very long time, and it is so much fun.

Something about that cooker, it roasts everything wonderfully. My favorite is sliced peppered steak with onions and corn, and cheese melted on top. Or prawns and mushrooms and tiny potatoes. My mother in law had so many options for us, there was no way we could try everything before being too stuffed to continue. It's an interactive meal (like fondue), and you have people saying, "Pass the aoili" and "Pass the cauliflower" and "Pass the bell peppers" and "Pass that dark cheese there" constantly. We had two raklette cookers for our holiday.

Here we are getting into the task of creating our own little meals. Nora is scraping her little tray's contents onto her plate. Lots of reaching across the table occurs: )





Here I am checking on my creation - prawns with melted cheese on top? Weird!

I'd like to thank those shepherds who came up with this idea. And my mother in law for going to all that trouble for us! Wenn du das hier liest, herzlichen dank eva!


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