A weakness of the British Food culture is that we don’t talk much about the taste and quality of food. Unless there is something really wrong and you are intending to dispute paying for it, the standard response to any enquiry about how you are enjoying the meal is “it’s lovely, thank you”. Of course, if you are a guest, it would be considered rude to say, or ask, a lot more about the meal. A throw back, I guess, to not wanting to embarrass a hostess who may or may not have been very involved in its preparation. As a result of our reticence to talk about what we are eating we have a very limited vocabulary for discussing taste, and sadly, if we are not cooks ourselves, little knowledge of how a dish was prepared nor how the ingredients were produced. We are often urged to eat more “mindfully” and, whatever you might feel about the word, the point is very valid. The British spend too short an amount of time eating and are frequently engaged in another activity whilst they do. We need to learn how to be more discerning.
When I buy cheese from The Fine Cheese Company it is accompanied by a booklet for my tasting notes. I found it particularly useful with my young nephews, who each had a book for recording the cheeses we ate. The content of the book teaches key differences, e.g. the type of milk used or the style of cheese, which over time builds a picture of your preferences whilst being incredibly easy to complete on a mainly tick box basis. Even suggested flavours, e.g. floral, mushroom and grassy, are provided in the tick-box format. I wish more producers or sellers would write something similar. You might expect to find tasting notes on a bottle of wine or whisky but unless you take part in a tutored tasting I can’t think of many other foods that help build our tasting skills and vocabulary. I think some people find the whole idea an affectation, yet strong food cultures debate at length what makes the “ultimate” version of a dish, whether it be a particular herb or spice, a technique or a specific producer of an ingredient.
Yet with food or drinks that we make regularly I think we do have the skills. For example, when you make a cup of tea you probably have your favoured brand of tea, a preferred cup, and a view on whether it tastes better made in a pot or a bag in the mug. Even the water, freshly boiled of course, tastes different from one source to another. However, because we tend to be constantly looking for new dishes to try, we don’t build up this level of discernment. A good cook will always be looking to improve even tried and tested dishes.
A great book to illustrate this is Completely Perfect by Felicity Cloake. In it she considers 120 “essential recipes for every cook”, from scrambled eggs and roast pork to apple pie and custard. She compares the recipes of several well-known food writers, identifying key differences before finally giving her own conclusions and recipe. It would make a useful gift for a relatively new cook but is also thought provoking for the experienced – can we justify our own preferred recipe or have we just become stuck in our ways? My only reservation about the book is that not one of the ultimate recipes ever found its way into my favourites, although I did improve some, such as Welsh Rarebit which I discuss below, as a result of reading her research.
The process of continual improvement sometimes takes me by surprise when I reread the original recipe and see how much I have changed. One of the lovely things about handwritten recipes is that they show every amendment and it makes me think that I should number versions when I make changes to those I now store on my computer. They can provide an interesting history.
Here is Felicity Cloake’s research into Wesh Rarebit.
Perfect Welsh Rarebit
From Felicity Cloake’s Completely Perfect
Rarebits (a corruption of the original rabbit) are generally made with Cheddar, purely because that is what most of us tend to have hanging around in the fridge on the kind of lazy Sunday evenings the dish was made for. Mark Hix keeps things Welsh with Caerphilly instead, but in fact, according to Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham in The Prawn Cocktail Years, traditionally a rarebit would have been made from hard English cheeses, “Cheddar, double Gloucester, Cheshire and Lancashire”.
I’m with Nigel Slater; Caerphilly doesn’t have enough of a tang for this particular dish – it just gets lost amongst the other ingredients. Mature Cheddar is too strong for my liking though – and I’m not sure what Delia was thinking recommending intensely salty Parmesan. Lancashire, however, as suggested by Jane Grigson, has just enough bite to remain the star ingredient, without steamrollering everything else in the process.
Bread-wise, I like a seedy wholemeal for a really savoury flavour, but I respect your right to use whatever you like, as long as it’s robust enough to stand up to the weight of the topping: toasting it on both sides, as Hix does, helps with this. (The edges may char slightly during the final grilling, but as they’ll be covered in molten cheese, you’re unlikely to mind too much.)
Most rarebit recipes demand some sort of liquid to loosen the cheesy topping: ale or milk for Jane Grigson, cider for the Cheese Society, port for Mrs Beeton and stout for Hix, Hopkinson and Bareham. I find the cider too acidic, and port turns the cheese a slightly scary colour – the ale’s not bad, but the moment I taste the stout versions, I’m sold. It gives the dish a rich maltiness, which works fantastically with the salty, tangy cheese – and what’s more, there are a number of good Welsh stouts on the market to soften the blow of that English Lancashire.
If the cheese isn’t to turn rubbery the minute it’s whipped from the grill, you either need a tabletop “cheese toaster”, as recommended by Mrs Beeton, or some other fat in the topping. Too much butter, as used by Nigel Slater and Jane Grigson, makes things greasy, and Mark Hix’s double cream is too liquid. Egg yolks are by far the best option, adding richness whilst softening the cheese to a spreadable consistency.
English mustard (surely enjoyed in Wales too) adds a bit of a kick, and Worcestershire Sauce is a must for any cheese on taste – you could top it with a sprinkle of cayenne pepper too if you like, but frankly that’s quite enough flavour for me.
Serves 2
1 teaspoon English mustard powder
3 tablespoons stout
30g of butter
Worcestershire sauce, to taste
175g Lancashire cheese, grated
2 egg yolks
2 slices of bread
- Mix the mustard powder and a dash of stout to a paste in the bottom of a small saucepan. Stir in the remaining stout and add the butter and about 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce to the pan – you can always add more later if required. Heat gently until the butter has melted.
- Tip in the grated cheese and as it begins to melt, stir to encourage it. Do not let the mixture boil. Once it is all melted, taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary, then take the pan off the heat and allow the cheese to cool until it’s only just warm, checking regularly that it hasn’t solidified.
- Preheat the grill to medium-high, and toast the bread on both sides. Bea the egg yolks into the warm cheese mixture until smooth, then spoon this on to the toast and grill until bubbling and golden. Eat immediately.