Caws Pobi

Caws Pobi, Welsh Rabbit, Welsh Rarebit or if you would prefer it to be called in it's simplest form "Cheese on toast". I decided last night to make some rarebit out of the Moosewood cookbook, see I had made it I'd say about 4-5 years ago and while it was ok it wasn't nearly as good as my favorite quick food cream chipped beef on toast (aka: shit on a shingle). My wife shudders when I mention cream chipped beef on toast but then again that's my wife and she can't be blamed for her oddities (Where them blocks at?). So I decided last night was again a time to try the Welsh Rarebit but this time unstead of using cheep beer and cheep cheddar I used some quality ingredients. Nothing like using a good block of cheddar cheese and a fine bottle of Dog Fish Pale Ale to take a dish that I would have though should be cheap and make it worth a King's ransom, then again it really did taste good.

After dinner I was vaguely thinking about the origins of Rarebit and was curious if what I knew to be the case was actually true. The bit of information that I had heard about Rarebit was that it is a cheese sauce eaten first by the Welsh because they were either too poor, too stupid or too something to actually catch their own rabbit. I don't actually think the Welsh are stupid, just like I don't think that Polish people are stupid either (even though we do have all of those polish jokes that I remember from grade school), actually I think I remember something interesting about the Polish. Heh strange the way my mind works, I was pretty sure that they deciphered some German code right at the beginning of World War II, I could remember that they did this but what I forgot was that it was the "Enigma" code they broke. What does that have to do with anything, well nothing except that Polish people aren't stupid and I doubt very much that Welsh people were either, most likely just poor.

Strangely Wiki doesn't have too much to say about it other than yes indeed it was cheese on toast, and yes it was a slam against the Welsh oh and yes it has nothing to do with Rabbits other than it doesn't have any in it. Actually the best thing Wiki mentions about Rarebit is this:

In a society where most people could snare a rabbit for the cooking pot, a Welshman was considered by some people so hopelessly feckless that cheese melted with beer would have to substitute.

I mean come on there is just something wonderful about a sentence that uses the work "feckless", I mean I have no idea what it means but then again I really don't care. It sounds offensive, it feels offensive so damn it it MUST be offensive. As far as the history of rarebit goes I tend to like this site more. What I found most interesting about what I read is in reference to how difficult it would have been to prepare it when it was first made. When it was first prepared it would have been a long and involved process in part because to do rarebit you have to toast bread and toasting bread without a toaster my friend well... is hard. On top of that you then have to melt the cheese and poor it over the bread and somehow do all this while keeping it warm (without a single electric range to be found). Come to think of it, cooking anything sounded hard a few hundred years ago. The site went on to talk about how it was prepared using a device called a salamander which was pretty much like an anitique fireside skillet. Me being me and liking history I found another reference to Rarebit that mentioned a little bit about the history though I have to admit the pictures of Rarebit on the site make it look less than appealing. Our English friend mentions that around 1547 an Englishman (Londoner to be exact) named Andrew Boorde was unable to pronounce Caws Pobi correctly. That along with his inability to pronounce the Welsh language (something no one should be at fault for), and his dislike of the Welsh (hated actually) led him to call Caws Pobi "cause babe". In her opinion it was most likely him that if Caws Pobi would have first been called rarebit.

All that history aside if you are going to make it, buy some decent cheddar, don't use a lager or a pilsner (translated: Budweiser, Miller, Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors, etc, etc) use a tasty Ale. I say use a tasty ale because rarebit is nothing but beer and cheese and if your beer stinks and your cheese stinks well then your rarebit will stink. Oh and throw caution (caution I say) to the wind and do KRAZY things like double the amount of horseradish, add some parika and double the cayene. Why? Because I'm KRAZY with 'K'.