The specialty cheese section at the alternate Shop-Rite came through yet again. I keep worrying that I won't be able to find new specimens, and I keep being reassured. This time it was raclette, from Dairy Seiler AG, aka Seiler Kaserei AG. And it's based out of the town of Giswil, Switzerland.
As near as anyone can determine, raclette was first consumed in the Alpine regions of Switzerland and France. However, its popularity grew, and currently it's also consumed in the Alpine areas of Germany, Austria, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, and Monaco. The first historic mention of it, or at least a precursor version of it, is from a Swiss convent in 1291. The most distinctive aspect of raclette is how it's served. By far the most common manner is to heat it up, and then scrape the melted portions away, and eat them, often combined with potatoes, cornichons (see my post on February 17, 2016), pickled onions, dried meat, and washed down with a warm drink like black tea, or with wine. The traditional way to serve it in restaurants is to leave it by the fire, and then either an employee would periodically scrape the melted bits off and give them to the customers, or else the customers would do the scraping and gathering for themselves. Even more recently, some eateries have special grills at each table, so customers can heat up their raclette in the most convenient way. Kind of like another Swiss cheese dish, fondue, I guess. Moving to linguistic concerns, raclette actually means "to scrape" in a French Swiss dialect. The German term for it (sometimes it refers to a related cheese) bratchas, or brutkase, both mean "roasted cheese."
The official website for Seiler was one of those limited, terse ones, at least about the company's history. I don't know who founded Seiler, but I can reveal the business started in 1928. Their cheeses are aged in large caves that served as military tunnels during World War II. So the same places that stored plane parts, ammunition, and guided missiles now help a delicious food come to fruition. Seiler is pretty sizable, too, as every day the company processes 80,000 kilos of fresh milk from neighboring farms. Aside from several types of raclette, Seiler also makes grotto, sarnerli, and bratkase. As I mentioned previously, bratkase is sometimes an alternate name for raclette, but it can also refer to a slightly different, precursor version of it. Grotto is reportedly a hard cheese, and sarnerli is a soft and creamy cheese. Oddly, the website doesn't go into detail about the variants of sarnerli they sell, so evidently it's not one of their popular kinds. Seiler's raclette is aged for 3-5 months. And, for those who are lactose intolerant, allegedly their raclette is somehow lactose-free. (It should go without saying, but please confirm this for yourself if you're so afflicted--I don't want anyone getting sick.) Finally, the current Chairman of the Board of Directors of Seiler is Hans Rudolf Aggeler.
Seiler Kaserei raclette with onions: The color of this cheese was yellow, and it didn't have much of an odor. It's texture was semi-hard. I should also admit that I ate the cheese first, and then researched it. So, I didn't realize that most consumers eat it melted, and scraped off, along with potatoes, wine, etc. Anyway, I first had it plain and out of the fridge. It had a fairly mild flavor--kind of buttery, and a bit salty. I didn't really pick up on an onion taste, so maybe there weren't that many onion pieces in it. Not great, but still good. Then I tried it on water crackers, and this was also good, and a bit better. The pairing of the cheese along with the cracker was a winning one. Later, I put it on a hoagie (or sub) roll that still had some chicken bits on it. I heated this up in a microwave, and when it was done I also added some ranch dressing. The resulting sandwich was quite tasty--the best way I had it. So, accidently, I eventually had raclette in the type of way you're supposed to, heated up and melted. I can heartily recommend it--heated is best, but cold on crackers or plain it's also more than solid. I will definitely buy this one again if I see it, and would try other kinds of raclette, or other Seiler cheeses.
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