I always try to keep my promises – and a few days ago I promised that I’d post pictures of Peter’s birthday raclette dinner. Today at 10:03 AM Peter turned 24.
(Yes, I have vivid memories of that day, 24 years ago… but that’s another post!)
I’d never “done” raclette before, but I knew that it basically consists of “broiling” individual little pans of food. Kind of a healthy form of fondue… only different. My impression was that it was about as easy a celebratory dinner could get – just put out a bunch of food and start cookin’.
Right?
Not so fast. Before you can start cookin’, you have to start prepin’!
If you’re the birthday boy, your only job is to make martinis using your new martini shaker and glasses…
…and offering them to our guests – in this case, your sister and her beloved.
Pretty soon, the kitchen looks like this…
But at that point, who cares?
Setting the table for raclette is no small feat! We should have expanded the table because we kept putting more…
and more…
and more…
and more food out!
Finally, after the kitchen is an absolute disaster and you’ve chopped up FAR too much food for even a an army, it’s time to sit down and EAT!
(Do you notice that Aleks is missing? We sure did! He had an event at his fraternity that he absolutely couldn’t miss --being VP of the house and all -- so we had to celebrate without him.)
At this point, it’s time to place the food you like into your own little frying pan…
…cover it with cheese, and slide it into the raclette to cook!
When the cheese is melted and bubbly, you slide the whole thing out onto your waiting baguette. YUM!
It’s all a little messy, but so much fun! Dinner is not rushed and it can take an hour or more as you each create, and cook, and chat.
After dinner, Shasta and her friend Grace (Elisabeth’s Danny’s HUUUUGE dog!) offer to help clean up.
Then Grace shows off her new trick – or rather Elisabeth’s and Danny’s new trick?!
And then, it’s BIRTHDAY time! Kat made Peter a birthday cake! Peter refuses to be sung to because he hates a big ol’ fanfare.
But everyone likes THIS part:
Happy birthday, Peter! I love you!
Nice!! We do Raclette for New Years over here. We also put egg in the little pans instead of cheese sometimes (for variety). It works well too. COuld you get your hands on Raclette cheese over there?
ReplyDeleteCarol, just FYI I saw raclette cheese at Trader Joe's on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteAnd Happy Birthday to Peter!
yep you need a big table for raclette our gourmet (seems like you did a mixture...well we don't combine so much foods with raclette, gourmet on the other hand does).
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a lovely evening
CJ?
ReplyDeleteI had raclette somewhere in Europe (when I visited in 1981 - whoa - that's been a while) but in that case THEY cooked it all and brought it out. I like the idea of everyone at the table doing their own assembling and cooking.
ReplyDeleteNow you've got me thinking about getting one of these...
Hope you are doing well, Carol?!?!... It's been a while since your last post.
ReplyDelete