Taco Salad with a French Touch

When we first arrived here in France and were looking through our cabinets here in our apartment, we came across an interesting kitchen contraption. Later, we found out that it’s a table-top raclette grill and a friend showed us how to use it. Raclette is a type of cheese that melts very nicely and doesn’t have a very strong taste (my kind of cheese) and all the grill us used for is to put slices of raclette into the trays and melt the cheese so that you can pour it over the other things prepared to eat. Usually, a meal like this consists of small baked potatoes, deli meats (several raw types), tomatoes, and, of course, bread. It’s kind of like eating with a fondue pot. It makes the meal sort-of an event. It’s a lot of fun.

So, last night we used the raclette grill with one of Hannah and Malachi’s favorite meals- taco salad. Taco salad is always a bit hit and there’s never much left at the end of the meal. Yesterday, we decided to try something new and use the grill. It’s hard to find cheddar here (and very expensive, too), so we usually substitute a cheese called mimmolette for anything requiring cheddar. However, it doesn’t really give that nice melty-cheese effect. Raclette did the trick. Voila! Taco Salad with a French touch.

Side note on cheese. As far as I know, there is no other country in the world that can boast as France can that they have more types of cheese than there are days of the year, maybe as many as 500.