Beans on toast? How can Beans on toast be weird forgotten food?
So Iâm a little confused: the piece concentrates on Welsh Rarebit, but the photo is another old standby: baked beans on toast.
Except, itâs a particularly unappetizing photo of baked beans on toast, which is actually quite a nice, simple comfort food. Think: tea time in the winter. Kids love it.
We must have been typing at the same time! Yeah, exactly: beans on toast will never go away.
Forgotten in the poor abandoned colonies, cut off from civilisation, perhaps. Grief.
This sounds ridiculously tasty⌠but Iâm not sure if my wife, doctor, or heart will kill me first if I ate cheese and sardine paste on toast.
Not in the colonies I used to inhabit. Welsh Rarebit or posh cheese on toast as my mum calls it is a firm favourite in both Australia and the UK. I mean I probably would have died as a student with out itâŚ
Lets not forget one of the modern takes on Welsh Rarebit (eaten fairly regularly in this house): Horseshoes!
The UK is now a colony? Of the US?
Welsh rarebit (pronounced âWelsh rabbitâ) is of course still a favourite; itâs cheese on toast, and if you want to make it properly you should grate the cheese and add a dash of Lea & Perrinâs Worcestershire (pronounced Wooster, which is why Bertie Wooster is so called - saucy!) sauce. Some advanced types also mix in a little beer, before spreading it on toast thatâs already been toasted, and putting it under the grill.
Besides the beans on toast photo (we all seem to have thought the same on that one), beef tea? As in Bovril? Is this why football isnât big in the US, can you not handle your bovril?
For me Welsh Rarebit will always be inseparable from Gomer Pyle.
Welsh rarebit is âweirdâ and âforgottenâ? It wasnât that long ago that I saw a prepackaged Stoufferâs version in the freezer section of my local grocery store. It looks like you can still buy it, although Iâm not sure why people would bother with a microwave version of what they can easily make at home.
Heck, in one of his âGood Eatsâ episodes on cheese Alton Brown had a recipe for Welsh rarebit that made me seriously think about installing a fireplace.
Some of the genuine weirdness lost in our cuisine was discussed by Anthony Lane in his essay âLook Back in Hungerâ, which mentions such things as Escoffierâs casual directions to âfry ten blackbirds in butterâ. Now thatâs weird, and probably best forgotten.
Just as long as nobody tries to bring back Chipped Beef on Toast. Blecchh!
Reminds me of my friends blog http://thefoodbeat.net/ where she looks for olde timey newspaper recipes and then makes them.
Thereâs a recipe for âBaked Bean Rarebitâ in there⌠itâs not straight baked beans on toast (at least, Iâve never heard of putting cheese, milk, and butter into baked beans).
I love it when brits try to convince the world that there truly terrible food is good. Mmmmm nasty canned beans on toast, How about some mushy peas with that?
Neither Welsh rarebit nor beans on toast are particularly common or well known in th US outside of expat/ethnic communities and various pubs that attempt to recreate the same from the British isles. So yeah from the perspective of a presumable American writer theyâre weird and forgotten.
In my house, Shit on a Shingle never left. Apparently thatâs what having a father in law who was in the Navy does⌠my husband considers it a comfort food and actually feeds it to my children. YUCK.
Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong.
My sympathies.
When times are lean, my favorite thing to do is mix steamed rice, black beans, and a few small chunks of roasted chicken together with a squirt of Sweet Baby Rayâs or KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce and just a half spoonful of chicken drippings for savoriness. Very tasty, very filling, and much less slimy.
