As readers with long memories and a taste for nursing grudges will know, I am not a cheese fan. This can be a problem because, as readers with strong feelings and access to my postal address have told me, repeatedly, a good cheese can rescue even the least promising of leftovers.
They’re not wrong. From time to time, people will buy me books with titles like The Busy Cook, The Skinflint Chef, or Look, All I Know About You Is You Write About Food But It Felt Awkward To Turn Up Without A Present, OK? and I am struck by the fact that many of these time-saving, money-saving or effort-saving recipes can effectively be boiled down to “grab whatever crap you’ve got left in the fridge and melt cheese over it.”
Those of us who aren’t fond of cheese have to turn to another dairy-based method for turning leftovers into a passable meal – yoghurt, turmeric and a very broad interpretation of what the word “curry” means.
But where us cheese refuseniks really struggle is when you suffer the worst of all house guests: the surprise vegetarian. You know the kind: you’re having some people over and perhaps 10-15 minutes before your guests are due to arrive, you receive a text saying that the new boyfriend is a vegetarian. At this point, the gracious host has two options – whip something up involving cheese, or feed your guests rat poison.
Thankfully for the life expectancy of my friends’ partners, Delia’s guide to cooking with cheese is here to help. She also has thoughts on where and how to store your cheese, which, if you don’t live in a one-bedroom flat in London, may well be helpful. As I don’t have “a spare bedroom, a garage, a garden shed or a car boot”, and because the temperature in our flat can vary wildly depending on how many of the people in the flat below have decided to turn their heating on, I keep my cheese in the fridge.
Delia also has the perfect recipe for the surprise vegetarian: Welsh rarebit AKA Welsh rabbit (as she likes to call it) AKA cheese on toast for posh people.
Cheese on toast for posh people is just enough effort not to be seen as an act of extreme hostility, while being easy enough that when you say “It was no trouble, really”, you will get to the end of the sentence without breaking into a series of swearwords.
Delia’s recipe is particularly easy as, unlike most Welsh rarebits, you don’t heat the cheese mixture before adding it to the bread, which makes washing up afterwards easier. Instead, you grate the cheddar and onion, chop the sage, and mix it all together with a large egg, mustard powder, Worcestershire sauce and four tablespoons of brown ale.
Most recipes call on you to toast only one side of the bread, which, if you’re anything like me, you ignore. In Delia’s recipe, she doesn’t do this either, so you can do that first bit in a toaster. Delia then recommends letting it dry out in a toast rack. I’ll hazard a guess that you, like me, are not a hotelier and are therefore unlikely to have a toast rack, but don’t worry – just lean it against a recipe book and you’ll achieve the same effect. Apply the mixture, put it under the grill for a few minutes and then – you’re done! Honestly, it was no trouble.
Stephen Bush is cooking his way through Delia’s Complete How To Cook (BBC Books, £40) in a year; You can watch Delia Smith’s free Online Cookery School videos at deliaonline.com; @deliaonline
