I was really excited about this. The poor woman behind the cheese counter - I talked her ear off (explaining the traditional half a wheel of cheese method vs the modern home raclette oven) while she sliced the cheese.
Under normal circumstances, nothing could be easier than raclette. You boil potatoes, slice a tomato or two (and/or some bacon), and make a salad (I like it with a simple fennel salad best, with inversed oil vinegar proportions - a light counterpart to help cut the fat of the cheese). Put out a bowl of cornichons and some spices (lemon pepper & paprika are the favorites at our house)...and there you go. Don't forget a good chasslas (they do exist!) or a light pinot to go with it! We broke out a bottle from the vineyard where we used to live for the occasion. Yum!
Only it wasn't as simple as that last night. It turned out to be a real exercise in patience. Our fabulous machine (like so much of our kitchen equipment, it's from H's mom), blew not one, but two transformer fuses (we have to pull out the transformer, as this machine runs on a Swiss plug/voltage). Finally, H lugged over the super heavy duty transformer that the wine fridge runs on in the family room. Now normally, the first slice of cheese takes a moment to melt...but when the cheese still wasn't bubbling after 15 minutes or so, I took a hint. It turns out the transformer wasn't set to the proper voltage. Anyway, so much for the simple, easy dinner - the whole ordeal took about an hour to get rolling. But it was tasty...and worth the wait.
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