I repeat ... Welsh Rarebit is NOT cheese on toast!
You can read all about Welsh Rarebit on Wiki, the history, the variants, but in a nutshell, it's cheese, let out with milk or ale, thickened and poured over bread.
Bread? As ancestral eaters, we don't eat bread ... we can enjoy something far superior in terms of flavour and nutrition: the mushroom.
Ingredients
Portobello mushroom.
Cheese, beer and cream.
Mushroom
Mushrooms contain a lot of water and as such can leave an unappealing spill on the plate.
Two solutions: first, enjoy the mushroom uncooked; second, griddle the mushroom underside uppermost until the liquid comes up, flip and press down to cook off the water but absorb all of the flavour back into the mushroom.
Rarebit
Cheese, beer and cream.
First, the cheese - you can use cheddar, something crumbly like Caerphilly, Cheshire or Lancashire, even stilton.
I used Blacksticks Blue, a gorgeous coloured stilton from here in northern England, which will work perfectly with a little splash of the beer I'm enjoying while cooking. Guinness Foreign Extra.
Just a splash, maybe a tablespoon per serving - the purpose is just to let out the cheese just a little. Likewise, cream; just a splash.
Warm up gently and stir constantly while reducing to a thickened, but not thick sauce.
Serve
Serve as a starter, as part of a light lunch with some salad leaves alongside or as a side attraction to a main meal.
Mushroom down, pour the source over. Simples.
