Have you eaten raclette? It’s a semi-soft, slightly stinky cheese from Switzerland, and it’s fantastic melted. We’ve bought it before, usually to put on hamburgers – a use I highly recommend. However, I had never had it served in the traditional manner, melted and poured over bread and vegetables, so when John DeGloria over at Slough Food announced a Raclette Night, we were keen to go.

The premise is simple, made even simpler with these nifty raclette grills. Unlike fondue, where you melt the cheese and dip stuff in it, here you melt the cheese and pour it over other stuff. There are cute little Teflon dishes to put under the broiler, and while the cheese heats up you can toast bread, or halved potatoes, or ham, or whatever you like on the top griddle.

Once we all had the idea, we were turned loose on the grills and a counter full of ingredients. There were steamed potatoes, good bread, ham, prosciutto, several kinds of cheese (including raclette, of course), and a tossed green salad.

Since you are just heating up a bit of food at a time, you can stretch out a meal for hours. An excellent opportunity to go through some good wine. This Mondeuse was a wonderful match with the cheese.

And a cannoli to finish things off.

I really liked the sound of John’s suggestion of doing this with queso fresco and tortillas, for a Mexican “raclette” night. He had some incredible goat queso from Gothberg Farms, a local cheese producer (we recently went through two packages of her fresh chevre, it’s delightful), but I’m guessing cheddar would work too.

Slough Food rents these little grills out for free, with cheese purchase. We are definitely having a raclette party at our house this summer.

On our way out to Larabee State Park for a walk in the woods, we stopped in the town of Edison for a bite of lunch. My original intention had been to have some fried oysters and a beer at The Edison Inn, but as we walked past Slough Food we spied a sign advertising lunch in their courtyard. Whoo!

This place is one of our favorite shops in the whole area. John DeGloria, the owner, sells an intriguing mixture of European imported foods, such as pasta and anchovies, and locally produced specialties such as duck eggs and chanterelles. He has an incredible cheese case, plus cured meats from Salumi and other sources. Most of the shop is dedicated to wine, with a special table set aside for high quality chocolates. There is no better place to build a picnic. And even better, now you can have the picnic right there in the back yard!

The courtyard just opened about a month ago, and the menu is still limited to a few kinds of panini, tossed salads, and charcuterie plates, with a limited selection of bottled beer and wine by the glass. However, you have the option of any bottle of wine in the shop, with a $5 corkage fee, which I would consider a steal.

Plus, the panini and salad are nothing to sneer at. The mixed greens (I saw chard and orach in there) were fresh and delicate, with a scattering of flower petals and a light vinaigrette. The panini were hot and crunchy and full of mozzarella and basil. Mine had intensely ripe tomatoes as well, and Jon’s had prosciutto. Really good.

And you get to eat all this while sitting in someone else’s garden, sheltered from the wind blowing across the slough, watching the grasses wave. Then you can go next door to the Breadfarm for a fresh macaroon, and maybe a baguette for dinner.

And then a walk in the woods.