This August 5–7, prepare yourself for a cheesy musical odyssey the likes of which you’ll be jazzed to hear about—culture: the word on cheese is partnering with Napa Valley winery Long Meadow Ranch to bring you Cheese Lands, your one-stop shop for cheesy treats at this year’s Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park! If you’re attending, stop on by and eat some cheese! If not, make these plates at home and stream the whole thing from your couch!
When dancing all day’s got you hungry, head on over to our Cheese Lands booth and try some melted Emmi Raclette—the perfect way to recharge.
Raclette | Emmi | Switzerland
Image courtesy of margouillat photo via Shutterstock
The name “raclette” refers to both the preparation of the dish and the cheese itself. The cheese is an uncooked, semifirm, washed-rind Alpine cheese. Typically produced in 13-pound wheels with a 12-inch diameter, the cheese is made from the milk of two breeds of cow, the Fribourgeois and the Ehringer, each of which lends a distinct flavor to the curd. The name “raclette” comes from the French verb racler, which means “to scrape,” chosen for the method of using a broad knife to guide the melted layer of cheese off of the wheel and onto the plate. And Emmi’s raclette is one of the very best.
Traditionally, the meal is simple: the melted cheese is scraped onto a plate with boiled potatoes, cornichons, and sometimes meats. For this plate, we’ll be breaking the mold, instead pouring it over Rustic Bakery Sel Gris Flatbread Bites and serving it alongside Les Trois Petits Cochons Petitis Poivrons and Jambon de Paris Fumé.
To top it all off, we’ll have a couple Boska Raclette Quatro grill on hand to melt like true raclette pros. This world-rocking apparatus allows a quarter-wheel of raclette to rest on a curved support while a heating element warms the cheese from above. As the top layer melts, we’ll scrape it off the wheel right onto your crackers.
Caroline Fenn
While Caroline Fenn’s primary pursuit is an M.A. in publishing from Emerson College, she thinks almost as frequently about whether burrata or Brie would be her desert island cheese. She comes to Boston via Connecticut and Rhode Island and also loves writing, coffee shops, and Fountains of Wayne.
