My spousal unit, The Brain, has been wanting to eat a bit less meat. Who am I to argue?
One, she’s one of the five smartest people I’ve ever met, and she’s never wrong. Two, even if I thought she could be wrong, all the facts I can find suggest I’d be wrong about that.
Raising an animal to market weight takes a certain number of calories, more than the animal produces in food. For an animal that might be a few weeks or a couple of months from birth to slaughter, like a chicken or goat, that’s not necessarily a big deal, particularly because animal protein has all the essential amino acids that few vegetable sources have.
But the bigger animals that take a number of months or even a couple of years? That’s a lot of calories spent just standing around, breathing and pooping. (Pro hint: The most sustainable seafood you can get? The bait: sardines, minnows and the like.)
So to balance off that really nice steak, or that pork tenderloin, we try to eat vegetarian once a week. Eggs are good, but increasingly expensive. Tofu has a certain flexibility, but my repertoire of recipes is still limited.
And cheese. So I’m expanding the cheese section of my cookbook, and thought of a dish I’d had once or twice in the school cafeteria as a kid: Welsh rabbit.
The dish then was, to be apt, inoffensive. A mild cheese sauce over white-bread toast. But as I remembered it, I started looking into what’s behind the recipe, including its history.
What’s behind it remains a good deal of mystery. The dish was first mentioned by name in 1725, but historians are still puzzling over how it got the name. The leading theory is that it was some kind of English joke over either Welsh poverty or Welsh sensibility, something about only a Welshman would consider cheese a rabbit. Something like that.
The term Welsh rarebit has also been used, but not until about 1781.
Still, this is brilliant peasant food – cheap ingredients assembled with love. And it has beer. One cannot argue with cheese and beer.
Because this recipe is so simple, the quality of the ingredients is the biggest concern. Don’t scrimp on flavor. Use whatever cheese you like that melts well. Cheddar is traditional, but make it a cheddar you’d eat, anyhow. I went with a New York extra sharp that had been aged eight years.
And use good beer. Life is too short for bad beer. English-style ales would be more in keeping with the historic nature of the dish than a German lager. And go for dark ales. A porter or stout brings a certain malty sweetness that balances the sharpness of the cheddar once it’s all blended.
After that, the dish really is just a cheese sauce. It’s traditionally served over toast, but it makes an excellent sauce for roasted cauliflower or some other vegetables. Adjust the liquids a bit, and it would make a pretty good soup, too. You might even want to serve it over macaroni, make it – well, another common cheese dish.
WELSH RABBIT
2 Tbs. butter
2 Tbs. flour
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup porter or stout ale
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
6 ounces (about 1 1/2 cups) shredded Cheddar
4-6 slices toasted bread
Melt the butter in a medium pan over lot heat, then whisk in the flour to make a roux, maybe two or three minutes. Stir in the mustard, Worchestershire, salt and pepper.
Add the beer and whisk to combine, Then stir in the cream and milk. (Add the milk gradually, using more or less to come to the consistency you desire.)
Fold in the cheese, a handful at a time, until it melts.
Ladle over toast or vegetables.
Play with it: A half-teaspoon of cayenne pepper when you add the Worchestershire, or a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce at the end can add some zing. You can substitute crushed mustard seed for the Dijon mustard, but the Dijon brings a welcome touch of acid. Some variants call for a bit of fried and crumbled bacon, although that kind of defeats the vegetarian angle.
Serve it with an egg on top, and that’s called a buck rabbit. Blend it with a bit of tomato sauce and you have a blushing bunny.
