Weekend Carnivore

There isn’t a modern day British celebrity tv chef that doesn’t owe something to Keith Floyd. Most of them, may not share a cooking style with Keith Floyd but if it wasn’t for Floyd and his tv cookery adventures none of them would have the sort of cooking shows they now front. Keith Floyd took the British tv cookery show out from the stuffy studio and onto location.

Evidence of the influence of Keith Floyd’s cookery shows can been seen even in the current tv schedule with Jamie Oliver’s American Roadtrip cooking series. The whole idea of going to another country, meeting the locals and then cooking their own dishes for them is taken directly from the Keith Floyd school of tv cookery.

So, when it hit the news earlier this week that Keith Floyd died of a heart attack, the British foodie community certainly took notice. Normally, you would say that when somebody such as Keith Floyd died at such a fairly young age that it was a shock. However, nobody that ever saw the way that Keith Floyd drank or saw the fat levels in his recipes could be all that shocked that he would have a heart attack. None of which, makes it any less sad.

When two members of the UK Food Blogger’s Association – Back To The Chopping Board and A Slice Of Cherry Pie – started the Farewell Floyd blogging event I knew that I wanted to take part and make a recipe.

The quest  to find a vegetarian Keith Floyd recipe began. If there was one thing that Keith Floyd was not then it was vegetarian. He used bacon drippings in recipes the way that some chefs use salt and pepper. For a moment, I thought I struck gold when I found a Keith Floyd recipe for braised celery. That was until I actually read the recipe and discovered that he cooked the celery in veal stock. I mean – *veal stock*. As if chicken stock wouldn’t have been good enough to take it out of the realm of vegetarian possibilities. He has to go use stock from a meat that most meat eaters in the Western world won’t even eat!

Finally, I settled on having a go at making Keith Floyd’s Welsh Rarebit recipe. Just by reading the recipe over at BBC Food, I felt my arteries harden. Still, I had already mentally committed to it and since my husband is visiting his folks this weekend, I can cook ‘weird’ meals without anybody but me pulling a face.

The recipe called for brown ale, butter, cheese, whole milk and egg yolk. I decided to do my best to make it just a tiny bit more healthy. For the bread, I used Burgen’s soya and linseed bread and since all I ever have in the house is reduced fat cheese I used that in place of the full fat cheddar. I mean, if I was going to use real butter than there was no way I was using full fat cheese too. I also went for skim milk instead of the whole full fat milk.

I don’t drink beer either. Which meant that I had to go across to the shops to pick up a bottle of beer. Me shopping for beer is about as clueless as it gets. I stood there just looking at the beer for ages. The only brown ale I know the name of is Newcastle but they didn’t have any of that. So, I decided just to grab a bottle of Guinness.

The only other real change I made was that instead of normal English mustard, I used some of some beer mustard I bought from Emily’s Jams and Preserves when I was in Wales earlier in the year. It felt apt to use the boozy mustard for a Keith Floyd tribute. Of course, this being a vegetarian recipe blog, I used vegetarian Worcestershire sauce too.

As far as Keith Floyd recipes go, this wasn’t a complicated or overly involved recipe but it still had a lot of fiddly bits. Certainly more than I would normally take to do what really boils down to cheese on toast. Still, it was pretty darn tasty even if there were so many calories in it that I had to make two slices be my entire evening meal.

Here is my somewhat healthier (but not all that much) version of Keith Floyd’s Welsh rarebit recipe.  I think I will use this Keith Floyd inspired cheese fest as my jumping off point to get seriously back on track with my calorie counting and make up for the ton of cheese I just ate!

Keith Floyd’s Welsh rarebit makeover

Keith Floyd Welsh Rarebit Recipe

Ingredients:

1 ounce butter
1oz flour
5 fluid ounces skimmed milk
6 ounces reduced fat cheddar cheese, grated
5 fluid ounces Guinness
1 tsp English mustard or beer mustard
2 tsp vegetarian Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper
2 egg yolks
4 slices of granary toast

Directions:

1. Make a roux with the butter and flour, and leave to cool.
2. Bring the milk to the boil, then whisk it into the roux. Bring to the boil once again, whisking to ensure that it does not burn and also that the sauce is free of lumps.
3. Add the cheese, beat in and remove from the heat.
4. Reduce the ale, English mustard and Worcestershire sauce. When thick, add this mixture to the cheese sauce. Season well with salt and pepper and beat in the egg yolks.
5. Spoon on to the slices of toast and grill until bubbling. Serve with extra Worcestershire sauce handed separately.

Serves: 4

Glasses up to Keith, whereever he may be!

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