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FOOD
I Learned About Raclette From My Favourite Childhood Book: Heidi
My version isn’t quite the dish Heidi ate in the Swiss mountains
One of my favourite childhood books was Heidi, written in 1880 by the Swiss author Johanna Spryri — who wrote it in four weeks. The story of an orphaned girl who is sent to live with her grumpy grandfather in the Swiss Alps, it carries messages about health, kindness and the power of nature. All I remember is Heidi and Grandfather eating raclette.
Growing up in a seaside town in southeast England where the sole Chinese restaurant was considered mysterious and exotic — I’d never eaten Chinese, and neither had anyone I knew — I’d never heard of raclette.
It sounded delicious though: a big hunk of Swiss cheese heated next to the roaring fire, Grandfather wielding a sharp knife, known as a raclette, and sending gooey melted cheese onto boiled potatoes. All washed down with a glass of milk still warm from the cow.
Many years later, the first meal I ate on a visit to Switzerland was . . . a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Just kidding. But the raclette served up in a…