Tuesday, 3 January 2012

Welsh Rarebit Week - Part 1 of 6 - Country Life Dot Com


Off to a flying start, and introducing two ingredients I had never considered before….
Our first recipe was the “Perfect” entry, and turned out to be “Perfect Welsh Rabbit” from Country Life’s website. There are a couple of interesting historical notes attached: “Yes, rabbit, not rarebit, as Welsh rabbit turned up in print in 1725 and rarebit 60 years later. In 1747, Hannah Glasse had recipes for rabbits for Scotland, Wales and England. The first was just toasted cheese on toast and butter, Welsh rabbit had mustard added, and English rabbit had red wine soaked into the toast.”
The inclusion of mustard was something I had only heard about in the last week or so, when both Old Bob AND Woolpack Wally told me that they like to include it, during pre-competition discussions at the Grumpy Old Men‘s Club. Equally, the inclusion of beer was a new one on me, so I had some concern as to what kind of beer to use. A few of this week’s recipes demand beer, be it “brown ale”, “beer” or “strong beer” so I plumped for Marston’s Pedigree which seems to tick all those boxes.
As always the photo is my own version of the recipe.
Find the recipe online here : http://www.countrylife.co.uk/countryside/article/116565/Perfect_welsh_rabbit.html
Taste - 3.5
A good start and a tasty, easy recipe. I’ve never included mustard or beer in cheese on toast before, but they certainly provided a bit of depth and “oomph”, making the whole thing a pleasure to eat.
Presentation - 2
Looks just like cheese on toast traditionally does. There’s toast at the bottom, and cheese on the top. Not bad, not great, just…..cheese. On. Toast. Will any of the other recipes try to do anything different?
Ease/Effort - 3.5
With minimal ingredients the recipe was simplicity itself, but would that produce a bland, uninspiring finished product? The first job was to “grate the cheese”. Again, I have always just sliced the cheese, so this was another new one on me. This was then mixed with butter, Worcester sauce, mustard and beer to produce a “rough paste”, which was then spread over toast and grilled. The recipe tells you to grill for “a minute or so” until the mixture singes in patches, but this actually took four minutes until the required effect appeared.
Scores On The Doors:
Country Life Dot Com - 9
Running Order:
Day Two - James Martin.
Day Three - The Foody Dot Com.
Day Four - Sue Marchant.
Day Five - Delia Smith.
Day Six - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

1 comment:

Z said...

Sliced cheese on toast is toasted cheese. You have to add other ingredients and grate the cheese to mix them in for it to be Welsh rarebit, and one usually heats the mixture and pours in on the toast before grilling. Beer, Worcester sauce and mustard are the classics. Oh, and it's spelt rarebit and pronounced rabbit.