You all know I love cheese, so how could I not love Welsh
Rarebit: an utterly British dish of toasty bread slathered with rich melted
cheese thinned with ale then broiled. I
first tried this dish on a pub crawl during a sojourn to London, but I’d heard
of it years earlier, when I was a kid. I
still remember the place I first heard of Welsh Rarebit—it was of course the
place where one usually hears of Welsh Rarebit:
The Gomer Pyle TV Show.
Admit it, you watched it.
We all did. We didn’t know any
better back then. Well, there was this
one episode where Gomer started sleepwalking and doing crazy things (well,
crazy for Gomer) like yelling at his Sergeant and generally not being himself. It turned out that the cause of all this was
that he had been eating Welsh Rarebit every day for dinner. Apparently there’s been a long-standing
belief that eating Welsh Rarebit causes strange dreams.
Where did that come from?
How could melted cheese on toast cause strange dreams?
To the Internet, Robin!
Turns out that there was a very weird comic strip in the early part of
the 1900s that was called Dreams of the
Rarebit Fiend. This strip, which
prefigured The Far Side by
three-quarters of a century, presented the bizarre, surreal dreams of people
who had eaten Welsh Rarebit before bed.
This strip was apparently the source of the notion that
Rarebit causes weird dreams. The author
of the strip (Winsor McCay) originally drew a one-shot comic strip called Dream
of the Tobacco Fiend. His Editor liked
it, but apparently he didn’t want to offend the tobacco fiends of the world,
thus he suggested McCay replace the word ‘tobacco’ with something completely
innocuous and innocent. Their
choice: Welsh Rarebit. I have to admit that the juxtaposition is
funny because of its absurdity. But of
course Rarebit got a weird reputation ever since.
Well, reputation be dammed! This is a delicious dish that one shouldn’t
miss.
Welsh Rarebit, dispite the ‘Welsh’ moniker, is not from
Wales (my ancestral homeland, no less) but in fact the dish is quintessentially
English. The name may have originally
been ‘Welsh Rabbit;’ it is speculated that this was either a slight against the
Welsh in that they couldn’t afford a real rabbit, and that they had a supposed
fondness for cheese.
Welsh Rarebit
4 Tablespoons Butter
1/4 Cup Flour
2 Tablespoons Dry English Mustard
1/2 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
2 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
12 Oz Beer (Preferably an English Ale or Bitter)
2 Cups Cheddar, Grated
3 or more Slices of Crusty Bread, Toasted
Melt Butter in a large skillet.
When it has melted, sift in the flour
and
allow to cook for a couple of minutes.
Add the Cayenne
and the English Mustard.
Add the Worcestershire Sauce
and then the beer.
Allow this to simmer for a few minutes,
then
add your cheese.
Stir over medium heat
until the cheese is melted.
Toast your bread slightly (not too dark, as it’s going
back under the broiler in a moment with the cheese) You can use slices of ‘white bread’ if you
want, but I find some nice slices of baguette or Italian bread work best, and
make a nicer presentation.
Slather the toasted bread with the cheese sauce.
Make sure you cover the tops of the bread slices completely.
Place the slices under the broiler. Keep
a close eye on them. Pull ‘em out when
just start to turn golden brown and bubbly.
Serve immediately, but watch out, they’ll be hot.
Until next time,
Sweet dreams….
