What is raclette? I had no idea, but I married a German and was introduced to it thirty years ago. Raclette is a cooking method and a cheese at the same time. Raclette cheese is a Swiss variety of cheese that melts quickly and becomes ooey and gooey.

Raclette originated in Wallis, Switzerland, more than 400 years ago. The first written records date to the early 1800s as a “sumptuous feast” with roasted cheese. Shepherds came down from the alps and sat around a fire and kept watch over a quarter cheese round they placed over the fire. As soon as the cheese beganto melt, a knife scraped a slice of the hot cheese from the round and spreads it onto a piece of bread. Yummo right? Good idea, guys!

The name raclette comes from the french word “racler “meaning to scrape, which is the method of preparation or preparing the cheese. Restaurants do not have an open fires to melt the cheese as the shepherds did but have a raclette melter that holds a block or half wheel of cheese under a heating element. Once the cheese is melted, it is scraped onto prepared potatoes, vegetables, or bread.

Raclette is famous in Europe, especially in the Swiss Alps and other ski regions, as an after-ski warm-up treat after a long day on the slopes. Raclette is also well known in Germany and France; however, raclette places are popping up all over the US and Canada.

Many European households own a raclette grill which allows melting individual portions of cheese and a grill on top to serve grilled vegetables and meats with the cheese. Raclette is a popular Christmas Eve dinner in Germany and Europe. This is the first year we will have raclette on Christmas Eve.

A raclette dinner is a social style of slow eating. There are various cheeses, raw meats, cooked sausages, and charcuterie on the table. Small boiled potatoes, raw and pickled vegetables, and crusty bread slices are also traditional raclette items. Guests can choose what and how to grill and melt cheese on. Sauces and condiments are also available on the table to individualize each guest’s dishes further.

I decided on raclette this year for Christmas Eve to extend our dinner time. Sam has to work in the ER at the hospital in Bennington on Christmas Day, so this is the only holiday meal we will be having together as a family. Typically, a holiday dinner can last a mere 20 minutes, and boom, everyone is done and up from the table.

Raclette will slow us all down while cooking our food on the raclette grill. Everyone watches what combos each other makes and either copies it or tries to one-up each other.

I am preparing thinly sliced marinated flank steak, shrimp, and pork belly for my raclette proteins. I bought actual raclette cheese that I found at Aldis. I will serve asparagus, snow peas, mushrooms, sliced onions, and red peppers for veggies. For the pickled part of the selection, I will be making pickled red onions and carrots.

Pickled vegetables are included in raclette for a reason; to cut through the richness of the meats and cheeses. I also have some hard smoked sausage and prosciutto. I always include sliced apples and different james like quence or fig for people to choose from; sweetness breaks up the savory foods as a nice change for the palate.

A raclette dinner party is fantastic because everything is done ahead in the prep work. This frees up the host or hostess to spend time with their guests socializing, not cooking alone in the kitchen or panicked if everything will be done simultaneously. A crisp white wine, beer, and lots of water are beverages of choice for a raclette dinner party.

I got out our raclette grill this afternoon and have it ready for tomorrow night. I still have to pick out what type of tableware I want to use for all the food. Setting the table, choosing plates, bowls, napkins, and tablecloths are just as fun for me as cooking.

I still have a couple of gifts to wrap and am in the process of making a cake to bring to a holiday get-together at our next-door neighbor’s house tonight. I am crossing my fingers it comes out how I want.

Good luck getting everything done; it’s hard to believe Christmas is right around the corner, and remember, everything doesn’t have to be perfect. A tough lesson for me to remember myself especially when it comes to this holiday cake I am making.

Last year, I made two Korean dishes; kimchi arancini (rice balls) and Korean beef and rice flakes. I made it up, sort of. I was inspired by a dish that I saw and had a bag of rice flakes that I wasn’t sure what to do with. I also had some leftover risotto which I always use to make Italian arancini.

I nosed around the internet for rice flake recipes and found a one close to what I was thinking, but I distinctly remember not following it too much. As usual!

Since I was making Korean flavors, I chopped up some kimchi and added it to my rice balls aka arancini. I made a Korean gochujang dipping sauce for the rice balls.

When I asked my oldest son Noah what he wanted for his birthday dinner, he told me his favorite bite of 2020….Korean Beef Rice Flakes with Kimchi Arancini & a Gochujang Aioli. Shit!

I searched for my inspirational recipe and found it. So now the pressure is on to figure out how in fucks name I made this dish. The arancini rice balls are easy, at least I don’t have to worry about recreating that dish. Same thing with the aioli.

Noah has talked that dish up so much all year, the last thing I want to do is to disappoint his birthday taste buds. 🤞🏼

Whenever I hear potluck dinner, I immediately start thinking about what to make. I always make a hot dish or appetizer for our belly dance Holiday Hafla; this time, I needed to make a cold dish because there wasn’t any way to reheat or keep a dish hot. 

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am 90% of the time a hot food person. If given a choice, I will always pick a hot dish: a sandwich, entree, appetizer, soup, or chowder. 

I am also a savory person. I will choose potato chips or french fries over cookies or ice cream any day. This doesn’t mean I won’t eat a cold sandwich or salad. Before bed, I like to have something sweet, but I wouldn’t consider myself a sweets lover. 

We usually do a potluck sign-up sheet, but we didn’t this time since there were only seven of us. This could be a total crapshoot because sometimes there are too many desserts or all hummus and chips.

We all like to cook and eat, so I knew there would be different choices. I wanted to make something with flavor and easy to eat in its own edible cup. I decided to make Mediterranean Cucumber Cups, something I’ve never made or had before, but they sounded right for a hafla.

I picked up a couple of European cucumbers at Trader Joes the other day, along with some kalamata olives, grape tomatoes, a red onion, a couple of lemons, an orange bell pepper, and feta cheese. The only other ingredients I needed were kosher salt, pepper, and dried oregano in my pantry.

I peeled stripes in the cucumbers and cut them into one-inch pieces. I used a melon-baller to scoop out the insides of the cucumber, leaving enough on the edges to form a cup. I cut up the olives, tomatoes, red onion, and pepper. I zested a lemon and squeezed out the juice.

Next, I put all the cut-up veggies into a bowl and added the lemon juice and zest. I added kosher salt, pepper, and dried oregano to taste. I popped it into the fridge until later; I didn’t add the feta cheese yet until I was ready to fill the cups. The feta cheese would get cloudy and runny if I filled the cups too soon.

Later on, I added the feta cheese to the veggie mixture and filled the cups. They came out super cute, and I was happy with how festive and tasty they were.

At the hafla, we had different cheeses, cut-up fruit, sticky mango rice, fresh bread with honey butter, peppermint candies, and gluten-free brownies. The cucumber cups complimented everything on the table; everyone liked them. Everything I tasted was delicious; the sticky rice was my favorite. It wasn’t too sweet; it was perfect. I appreciated the gluten-free brownies as well.

I would have rather made something warm like spanakopita or a hot spinach & artichoke dip, but it wasn’t about the food I brought; it was about the dancing. I like hot food at the end of the day, but that’s just me.

Silverskin is a nasty topic they never really address on cooking shows or even in most cookbooks. Home cooks follow recipes in their favorite cookbook or try to recreate dishes they see celebrity chefs make on tv and wonder why the hell their meat came out tough, chewy, and mangled.

This type of cooking mistake isn’t the home cooks’ fault; it’s the food industry in general. Yes, I have a strong theory about famous chefs’ cookbooks and how their recipes are entirely different from what you eat in their restaurants. I’ve spoken with chefs, and they agree 100%.

The quick lowdown is the amount of fat, sugar, and salt used in restaurant food. One quick example out of many is Gordon Ramsey himself said on the tv show Master Chef that his mashed potato recipe is 60% potato and 40% butter with a tremendous amount of salt. No more wondering why his potatoes are so delicious, right? He isn’t making healthy food in his restaurants; he’s making delicious food you can’t replicate at home.

Ok, back to silver skin; what is it, and how do you get rid of it? Silverskin is the connective tissue found in certain cuts of beef, lamb, and pork, most noticeably on ribs. 

Silverskin is a silver, translucent membrane found on ribs, pork tenderloin, skirt, flank, other cuts of steak, and rack of lamb. Silverskin isn’t found on poultry. I am not sure about wild game meats since I don’t cook or eat them—sorry, hunters.

Silverskin is different from fat on meats. The fat renders down on a grill or melts away when braising meats. Silverskin doesn’t render or melt away; that nasty shit is there to stay, making the meat chewy and tough. Another thing about silver skin, when it’s not removed, it blocks seasoning and rubs from penetrating the meat. Silverskin mangles the meat when grilled or baked. 

When I was learning to cook, I assumed that the supermarket butcher “cleaned” the meat I was buying. What do they say about the word assume? Oh yeah, it makes an ass-out of-u-and me. Butchers will clean and trim fat and silverskin if you ask them to, or you can do it yourself. People who enjoy cooking may get the same satisfaction that I get after cleaning and trimming meat. It’s weird, I know.

The good news is silver skin is easy to remove with a bit of practice. You will need a sharp knife with a thin blade like a paring or boning knife, a cutting board, and some paper towels.

Whenever I make a pot of stew I buy chuck roast instead of stew meat. Stew meat is often filled with grizzled and fat in pieces smaller than I would like. Chuck steak is a relatively inexpensive cut of beef, although these days, nothing is inexpensive. Chuck steak is a tough piece of meat that needs to be braised. Dishes such a pot roast, sauerbraten, stew, or Mexican shredded beef used in tacos.

Trimming a chuck roast is pretty straightforward. You remove the fat with the knife or your fingers, then check for silverskin. Next, carefully slide the blade of your knife under the silverskin. If the meat is slippery, you can hold the meat with a paper towel for a better grip.

Remember these words…let the knife do the work. Carefully slide the knife under the skin and begin to pull up using your hand. The silverskin will lift off the meat; it’s pretty gratifying for me when I can get a big piece. Go to the next area and repeat, trying not to cut into the meat.

It sounds simple, but it does take some practice. You don’t want to trim meat your first time while rushing to get a weeknight dinner on the table. Practice your meat trimming skills when you have some time. I usually trim meat earlier in the day or the day before, then either marinate, dry rub, or wrap tightly for later use.

Silverskin on ribs is easy to remove and is only on the exposed bone side. Just lift one side with a paring knife, and the whole thing peels right off. Everyone in the bbq world removes the silverskin, so the ribs pull apart easily with that rubbery thing. 🤮

When cleaning a pork tenderloin, the silverskin is only on one side and starts at the end of one side of the tenderloin. The silverskin removal is a little tricky because it’s easy to take some of the meat with it. Getting the knife under the meat is harder than other meats. Slow and steady, then it comes right off with the help of a paper towel if necessary.

Some of our favorite cuts of meat are ones that people don’t know what to do with, let alone how to clean them; these cuts are flank steak, skirt steak, hanger steak, brisket, tres major, and flat iron.

Skirt and flank steaks have a lot of fat, which is easy to remove by pulling it off with your fingers. The silverskin is also easy to remove. You don’t want to remove all the fat since fat = flavor, and it is a fatty cut of meat; however, the fat melts away when grilled, resulting in a very tasty, tender piece of steak.

I have been wanting to write about trimming meat for months. If this is something that you have no interest in doing or are afraid to try doing, ask your butcher to trim the meat of the fat and silverskin for you. You can even ask the butcher department of a supermarket to do this for you as well. If they refuse, then find yourself a new supermarket. You don’t have to tell them to go to hell like I would. LOL!

Hopefully, I could explain meat trimming clearly and understandably. It takes practice like other kitchen skills; you can watch how-to videos on Youtube. Chefs and cooks weren’t born doing any kitchen task perfectly the first or second time they tried doing it. The biggest and most important thing with all knife work is using a sharp knife; if you don’t have one, make the investment and buy a new knife.

To sharpen your knife or new knife that will need sharpening, ask a kitchen store for advice for a good knife sharpener, or take your knives to a professional knife sharpener. Smith’s brand is my favorite kind of knife sharpener, which you can buy in a hardware store for about $17 bucks. Just watch a YouTube video on how to use it, and it will be your favorite too!

I rarely preach something but, you should be sharpening your knives regularly. I sharpen mine every time I use them. They don’t need much, just a new, fresh edge. I know people who have never sharpened their knives or only do it once a year then complain how much they hate cutting things. When people use dull knives, they are pressing down on the knife to cut, not let the knife glide through whatever you are cutting; back to “let the knife do the work.”

Well, I never imagined I would go on and on about silverskin and meat trimming. I hope this information has been helpful if it’s something you aren’t familiar with doing. I guess if you don’t eat meat or cook, this post definitely wasn’t for you.

It’s a snowy night here in Vermont, nothing real but snow showers. I stayed home from belly dance class. I haven’t regained my energy or strength yet from my booster; I need to save the little bit I have for spätzle production tomorrow and Friday. Have a great night!

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