One of the first foraged finds of our “summer” is fiddleheads. You can see by the canning date, these were harvested in May. They are tender and delicious and best served just-picked and lightly sautéed. Up here in the Upper 1 (as opposed to the lower 48), we love to figure out ways to preserve our summer finds so we can enjoy them all throughout the year. Freezing, drying, and pickling are all very popular methods.

During this past summer, we cracked into our winter pantry and sampled one of these jars. The first savory sour bite flashed me straight back to an all-time favorite meal – Raclette. This flavorful and delightfully fatty cheese originated in Switzerland. It is traditionally served by heating the cheese over a flame and scraping the melted cheese atop boiled potatoes and pickles. There is no better meal to warm you up at the end of a chilly day!

Wanting to put an Alaskan twist on this Swiss favorite, we’ve been trying to figure out how to acquire this specialty cheese in our fairly remote part of the world. After failed attempts of getting an Anchorage cheese shop to mail us some or having visiting friends hand carry us a couple of pounds, we gave up.

For weeks now, I’ve been grabbing things from our walk-in pantry. Every time I enter, I am met with those jars of pickled fiddleheads. Any normal person would just eat them in some other recipe. But I can be stubborn tenacious. Last weekend, I decided to try Amazon. Darn it all if there weren’t options for ordering Raclette cheese! Not deterred by the extra shipping cost, we decided to go for it. The cheese shipped out from the seller on October 29 and arrived today! It was well packed and arrived perfectly. Tonight’s menu is set. Melty raclette cheese served with boiled potatoes (traditional), pickled fiddleheads, pickled fireweed shoots, Alaskan reindeer sausage, and homemade sourdough bread. A nice bottle of Willamette Pinot Noir should be a perfect accompaniment. Cheers to tenacity!

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