Yesterday, the hubby reached home very late at night from his full day of hiking expedition to the glacier of Oberaletsch near Belalp. He left home just before 6.00 o’clock in the morning and did not arrive home until nearly 11.00 o’clock at night!
It was a lucky thing that I decided not to go with him yesterday … because the trek to the hut where he wanted to go took him nearly 6 hours to reach on foot (… of course with brief stops along the way to take photographs of the area lah! :)) If I had been with him, with my small and slow pace of walk … errr … I think we might ended up either having to spend the night at the hut (which unfortunately was already closed for the impending winter season!) … or … like some of our previous hiking excursions, it would have been very likely that we would have to turn back before reaching our destination!
However, I could see from the hundreds of photos that the hubby took during his hike yesterday … that it was a beautiful area … and the glacier, Oberaletsch, is as impressive if not more than the Aletsch glacier that we visited a year ago!
I would definitely lurveee to see it for myself … but I think it would only be possible if we spend a night in the area so that we could have an early start. As it is, the journey to the start of the hiking trail from Lausanne took more than 3 hours … as we would have to take a train, a bus and then a cable car in order to reach the start of the trail! So, to do it as a day trip would be quite impossible … for me! 😦
Maybe, it is something that we could plan for next spring lah! That will be soooo nice … 🙂
Now, if you like to see some of the photos of the Oberaletsch glacier that the hubby took, you can check out the entry that he wrote on his blog from the link below.
And to treat him for his full day of hiking, I decided to prepare some raclettes for him last night. Raclette is one of Swiss national dishes, apart from fondue and rösti … which is a favourite of the hubby’s. While fondue consists mainly of melted cheese (to be eaten with bread cut into small pieces) and rösti of potatoes, raclette on the other hand, consists of both melted cheese and potatoes!
The table all set and waiting for hubby to return from his long day of hiking up the mountain. The small square pans on the side is called coupelles and is used to place slices of cheese to be heated on an electric grill or toaster. The small wooden spatula is for scraping the melted cheese onto boiled potatoes.
For our raclette meal last night, I decided to use our balcony grown potatoes instead of those bought from the supermarket. I used a mixture of all the three types of potatoes that I had grown this summer. And the hubby claimed that they were delicious! Luckily for him that he said they were delicious … otherwise, no more growing of potatoes next year! hehehe … 🙂
Traditionally, raclette was prepared using a big chunk of round cheese that was melted bit by bit and then scraped off to be placed onto boiled potatoes. There is a machine that is used to hold the big chunk of cheese. However, nowadays most households would use a table-top grill to melt their cheese … and more often using cheese that has already been neatly sliced to fit into the small square pans … as we did. For last night raclette meal, we had bought a mixed variety of cheese. The cheese on the bottom left had paprika in them while the ones on the right had pepper corns. These two are more for me … since having a Malay taste buds, I prefer to have a bit of spices in my raclette!
And the grill to heat and melt the cheese. Since this mini grill can only heat two slices of cheese each time … our raclette meal is therefore always a long-drawn affair for us! 🙂
Although I would have preferred to remove the skin of the potatoes before boiling them … in order to make our life a little easier when it is time to eat our raclettes … the hubby prefers that I leave their skins on and would peel the skin only when we are about to eat them with the melted cheese. According to him, that was how raclette was eaten traditionally … and so he would prefer to keep that tradition! Hmmm … now you can understand why I said our raclette meals are always a long-drawn affair! 😉
And finally, my peeled potato covered with melted paprika flavoured cheese with picked gherkin on the side … ready to be enjoyed! To balance the salty taste of melted cheese, raclettes are often eaten with pickled vegetable such as gherkin (tiny cucumbers), onions and carrots. Since we only have pickled gherkin, we made do with that lah!
Since raclettes and fondues are favourite dishes for the cold season … you can guess what we would be having on a more regular basis from now on!! 😉
Hubby’s entry on his trip to the Aletsch region:
Just Sharing 