My younger sister- a lithe beautiful fairytale princess of a woman- married some time after I did. She found a post-modern handsome prince, at home in a suit or surf dude wear or a Cornish kilt, and scheduled a perfect reception at a stately home in Ascot.
The preparations were many, and each detail perfect, because my sister is nothing if not a perfectionist.
Just days beforehand, my husband Phil drew the groom-to-be aside, and gave him this piece of sage information: “The Shrewsday women,” he confided, “are excellent cooks. You will never go without a good meal.”
This is not necessarily true: but Phil is an appreciative soul.Each meal I cook is The Best Ever of its kind. I have just thrown together some mince pies to give the house that just-before-Christmas smell, and lo, Phil says they are superlative.
But we both know there are moments when I simply cannot get it quite right: and it is usually because Phil’s third criteria comes into play. He loves food with strange names.
Like Welsh Rarebit.
It does sound funny: that is the draw. It is glorified cheese on toast, pub grub served on bread during the 18th century with the nuttiest of garnishes.
The Welsh, the legend goes, could not afford meat: so the Welsh Rabbit was cheese.
It is bachelor food: it smacks of a man coming home and scouring the cupboards for anything which may be compiled into something edible. I know, he thinks to himself- I’ll have cheese, worcester sauce, lashings of mustard: and a swig from the can of whatever I have been drinking as I snaked my way home from the pub through the London streets. Ale will suffice.
American satirist Ambrose Bierce defines Welsh Rarebit, in his Devil’s Dictionary (The Cynic’s Word Book) in 1911: “A Welsh Rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit.”
All this delights Phil. No-one has yet been able to serve him a satisfactory rarebit, although he often has a creditable cheese on toast.
Don’t, please, get him started on the croque-monsieur. He can wax lyrical about these glorified ham sandwiches for hours.
Fritters. They are the customary haunt of those cathedrals of cholestrol, the fish and chip shops, which are stationed in many settlements in the British Isles.
Today we were discussing the ingredients we would use to make Christmas cake. Might we, asked Phil, use Gum of Arabic?
A name ripe with Eastern promise, redolent of something Scheherezade might use in one of her tales, Gum Arabic is really rubbery sap from the acacia tree. Once used in mummification and hieroglyphic ink, it was traditionally exported from the band of acacia trees which populated an area bordering the Sahara Desert, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
It’s the stuff in those gummy coke bottles and bootlaces, marshmallows and soft drink syrups. It does not overpower other flavours. It is a great source of dietary fibre, and low in fat.
And its name is impossibly exotic. Although for my husband’s reference I’ve never heard it used in Christmas cake.
A man who falls in love with the idea of a food is all too susceptible to myriad suggestions in the media.
One of Phil’s favourite programmes in the whole world is a BBC production called Victorian Farm. It follows three academics who opted to live in a totally Victorian fashion for a year, farming the land, using the implements and clothes the Victorians would have made, on a farm which had been relatively untouched since Queen Victoria herself died.
It’s lovely watching for the purists. And the Christmas episodes are the most sumptuous of all.
I should have sensed my husband’s radar when the heroine, Ruth, demonstrated step by step how to cook a Victorian Christmas Pudding.
The next morning he was asking me where one might find the material used to wrap a pudding when you boil it.
“What, you mean muslin?” I said.
Later, on my iPad, I found pages where someone had googled muslin squares.
Phil lost no time recruiting Maddie to help him make the pudding. It would need to boil for eight hours, he said. And this was when he came up with the nuttiest angle of all.
“I don’t want to take up the oven for all that time,” he announced. “We’ll use the chimenea outside to cook it.”
Phil has secured my huge stock pot. Today we will dry wood from the forest ready. And tomorrow he and his daughter will spend his day dancing between inside and outside, nursing a fire to boil a traditional Victorian Christmas pudding. For eight hours.
It is never dull, here at Shrewsday mansions.
Kate Shrewsday 
Priceless. Need I say more?
(As for muslin squares, if you ever run out let me know! I have a whole roll of them……)
Nuvofelt, thank you…if we have trouble I will be back in touch!
Ooh, that sounds like fun. Now I’m imagining your backyard looks the spitting image of Jamie Oliver’s.
I’m with Phil on the strange sounding foods obsession. In fact, that’s my main criterion when choosing dishes when I’m out. I have little other choice, given that I’m no foodie so therefore don’t understand the ingredients on most menus. Fortunately my husband, like yours, is very appreciative of everything I cook, even if it’s take-aways. His waxing lyrical over beans on toast always reminds me of a scene out of *The Castle* (and if you haven’t seen that Australian film, I recommend it!).
Another film for my Christmas list, Lynley, thank you. Phil will be chuffed to have found another with similar criteria for choosing food 🙂
Good!
Whatever the recipe, I hope he makes sure it contains lashings and lashings of alcoholic preservative. That is the most important part. Irish whiskey is my one of choice.
Rarebit is great to use as a wood-glue substitute.
Alcoholic preservative: got it. We’ll drown the pudding in grog, Col 😀
Wondering now how you know that welsh rarebit will stick wood together. Would love to be a fly on the wall in that testing session.
A tidy blog, Kate, if I may say. 🙂 Gratifying to see traditional Welsh recipe given due prominence. It’s a tragedy that no-one as yet has been able to serve Phil a creditable rarebit. It’s absolutely yummy with the right balance of mustard, Worcestershire sauce and ale.
I have a day off today and I started by making gloriously vivid Spanish chicken in the slow cooker which will be ready in, ooh about eight hours. There’s something about this time of year which lends itself to proper cooking. I love it. Now to paint walls…
Gum arabic? I think I used to use that in fancy icing – the kind where you make trelliswork and run-outs and construct little lacy-looking icing collars for cakes. Either that or gum tragacanth, or polyfilla… i forget.. 😉
Where to start? What a splendid contribution to today’s thread, Jan, thank you. Any decent Welsh Rarebit recipe gratefully received; the Spanish chicken sounds absolutely wonderful and sends me rushing for the recipe books. Fancy icing sounds like a very creditable use of gum arabic to me. And your polyfilla suggestion could be very useful on tiresome guests over the Christmas season. All in all, an action-packed response!
Maddie and owls have a busy day ahead of them – dashing from cake making indoors to pudding boiling outdoors, but what wonderful Christmas memories she will have.
Pudding boiling postponed until we can attain the muslin, Rosemary- although my mum says an old clean sheet will do. Hmmm. The moment it happens we will post the results…
Very entertaining, a good video of Phil, Maddie and the owls scurrying to and fro watching the pot boil would be fun.
I think if I asked the lovely Miss TK to spend a day outside cooking pudding, I would probably get a jello pop across the nose.
I think I am more of a pudding pop kind of guy where I just pop the top and voila, instant goodies.
You and me both, Lou! I love instant. But Phil gets these bees in his bonnet and nothing will budge them, no matter how long they take. It hasn’t happened yet – still awaiting the muslin- but when it does it will be a ceremonial all-day job….
Has he eaten biltong, wors or koeksisters?
No, Tilly: he would be in heaven with the SA repertoire of names…
Dried meat; sausage; syrupy dough. You can find them online.
The Shrewsday offspring will roll around on the floor at those names 😉
Each one a treat, Cindy 😀
Such a creative bunch you are!
I had a burst of baking for a while, but refuse to start again since I’ve discovered that home made comfort food has calories too. I’d hoped the virtue of making them would overcome the vice of eating them, but ’tis not to be. All nice things now come from the shop, and can therefore be ignored.
Have to say I’m the same, Fiona. I used to make shedloads of brownies and shortbread and then eat most of them. I ditched the habit about a year ago, but still return to it at Christmas. There is nothing, but nothing, like a home made mince pie…
Oh, my, this brought my gustatory senses alive.
* In my mind, the key to a good Welsh Rarebit is SHARP cheddar . . . if it’s sufficiently sharp, the proportion of other ingredients is not of great import. 😉
* My mother (and great aunt before here) boiled a Plum Pudding every Christmas . . . on the stove, in a mold, wrapped in muslin, using suet (from the butcher) as the requisite fat. Before serving, my mother would pour lighted brandy over it and stick a sprig of holly through its “heart.”
* Let me know if Phil declares, as did Bob Cratchit, “A triumph, my dear!”
He is a closet pyromaniac, Nancy, and loves to set the pudding alight every Christmas. I shall keep my ears open for that Cratchit phrase: and keep you posted!
Kate, I think Phil’s love of history comes into it as well.
And what a wonderful experience for Maddie. We shall hear with interest what emerges.
Dad
It is bound to be an interesting occasion, Dad 😀
I am honored that Phil chose to have Welsh Rarebit when we met you at the pub in London. 🙂
If he likes food with strange names, he must try chicken bog, also known as perlou. Here’s a link to a recipe I found online, though it isn’t the same without the cut-up link sausage in it. http://mikeh2010.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/chicken-perlou/ Very Southern.
I love the image of Phil and Maddie making the pudding in the back yard. Somehow, I bet it will be perfect. And, if it isn’t, they will proudly proclaim it to be anyway. 🙂
Thanks for that recipe: we’ll make it over the Christmas break. How could Phil NOT love chicken bog?
The wonderful thing about Phil’s adventures is that even when they go wrong, they do so spectacularly, and a story is born. My sister will always recall the time he turned up to one of her parties with an offering of ‘gunpowder cake’: a cake in which he had used some unspeakable grain or other instead of flour. It was a strange grey colour, and had a curiously gritty consistency: it spent the evening as main conversation piece.
So much fun, Kate, though I’m glad it is happening in your forest and not mine. One Christmas I made a roast with Yorkshire pudding. The roast was delectable. The pudding, well, we don’t discuss it. tee hee Do let us know the outcome. In-the-meantime, I’ll be singing “oh bring us some figgy pudding” and imagining the process playing out there.
I will keep everyone informed, Penny, have no fear….
I’m SO impressed by the thought of cooking a pudding in a wood fired oven… (don’t tell Phil that ideally what he’s making now should be kept for some months before tasting, Christmas 2012 for example!)
I look forward to a picture of The Real Thing.
Ah, he has done his research, EB: he knows it should be kept and has reasoned that he needs to include loads of alcohol to help it along. It’s a theory, though I ahve a feeling nothing will hurry along a good Christmas pudding…perhaps we should make two, and save one for next year!
I feel positively outdone, here making jammy thumbprints with my boy.
My husband is a huge fan of those types of shows. Here we have Frontier House and Colonial House and Texas Ranch House. If you should catch Phil Googling “calf nuts,” revoke his iPad privileges, posthaste.
Jammy thumbprints sound just perfect to me, Cameron. Phil is a man of the Big Dramatic Gesture. It makes for an interesting life but the bloopers, when they do come, are spectacular.
Once upon a time my Ma had a twin tub washing machine, (until 1972 ish I think) which could be turned to ‘boil’ and this she used to good advantage, making 5-6 puddings at a time and setting them in the bottom of said twin tub to steam away their hearts content without taking up room on the hob. (She then supplied several families with puddings.)
Inventive? Or slightly odd?
Well this was the same woman who used to cook her salmon in the dishwasher.
I have an aversion to both methods in case of soap. Though none of her food ever tasted of soap, I’m sure I’d go wrong somewhere and soap would get in.
Anyway I don’t have a twin tub. And I don’t think my automatic washing machine would work somehow.
Pseu, your mother was an unsung genius 😀 Talk about before her time: such inventive ways to save on power…and the thought of all those puddings at the bottom of the twin tub make me chortle….
Delightful – full of warmth and love 🙂 and a solid punt of one of our favourite snacks on the planet – the Royal Rarebit!
*Pounces on name greedily and squirrels it into blogging address book* Thank you Linda 🙂 ‘Tis nice not to have to call you Bandsmoke, though it’s a real flagship name and I love it dearly. As we in the know say: Huzzah.
Rarebit: well, for me, it’s a work in progress. Can’t I just call it cheese on toast?
Blimey, Kate, eight hours? I can’t wait the couple of minutes that something is being cooked in the microwave… I hope it’s cooked to perfection after all that time (the pudding, that is, not my microwave food ;))
Disintegration is a possibility here, Tom 😀 I am a microwave Christmas Pud person myself. This whole pud business of Phil’s is a grand historical experiment…
Amazing, the natural ingredients that go into making everyday things – Gum Arabic in coke bottles and marshmallows, and things like fishscales in lipstick – who decided on these things?!
Hope we get to see the photographed results of this fun baking activity (isn’t it snowing there?)
Oh, the visions created here — first your post and then all the delightful discussion that followed.
I am SO hungry for good mincemeat pie, but baking one would most certainly guarantee a personal disaster, since a) I’m talking about one of the ‘nearly instant’ variety concocted from the commercial, spirit-laced mincemeat sold in a jar (not homemade mincemeat); b) such a pie must surely contains a zillion calories; c) I’m nearly the only person left in my family who likes it; and d) being said “only” person, I’d just have to eat the ENTIRE thing!
Do you think maybe I could bake one, enjoy the scents from the oven, and then pack it away for next Christmas?
Will be awaiting your progress report on the great pudding adventure to come. 🙂
I take my hat off to Phil – he’s adventurous. Lucky for you that Maddie participates!
When my father was stationed in the UK, he ordered Welsh Rarebit–I think he’d had it with mutton–and was most disappointed at what the waiter brought. He’d been expecting fried rabbit, his favorite dish after fried chicken.
I would love to see a Christmas pudding prepared. Can’t imagine boiling anything for eight hours.
http://www.cookuk.co.uk/vegetarian/WelshRarebitRecipe.htm
Oh I do wish I could just come on over for a taste! I’m envious…of the end result, not the work itself! I would love an account of how it all comes out. Delightful! Debra
Debra, the next episode is today’s post. But we’re not there yet: we now have everything we need and today (21st) is the day. I have the camera ready. Anything could happen in the next 12 hours.
Sounds like a good sort, does Phil.
I think so 😀 I have a feeling you two would get on famously.