On A Raclette Kick

I'm learning more about raclette every time I make it, which is frequently in the past month or so - I seem to be on a raclette kick. Something about my Irish side loves the idea of spuds in any form whatever and if you add slightly stinky French cheese and (this time) bacon, all the rest of my genes sit up and beg for dinner.

I wish I had known about raclette while I was still working - this is the perfect dish for a busy worker bee, ready in a flash. The traditional pickles and pickled onions are already prepared and I would have boiled a bunch of small red potatoes and fried a few extra strips of bacon on the weekend so I was ready to heat them briefly in the microwave, pop on the cheese and other toppings, run it under the broiler while quickly steaming a veg or tossing a salad, et voila! Even without pre-cooking the spuds and bacon, this dish could go from ingredients in the fridge to finished dinner in about half an hour.

The block of raclette cheese I bought this time was softer and riper than the previous two I have tried, nicely stinky and a little sticky when I unwrapped it, less like Swiss and more like epoisse. Trimmed of it's orange outer rind, it made a simply killer raclette. Had I not added the bacon bits, it still would have been one of the best raclettes I have made; with the bacon bits it was Raclette Nirvana.

I promise not to post every single variation of this recipe that I try on my raclette kick, but the possibilities are endless!