A whole summer spent with our partners in cheese has left us quite peckish.
We visited makers in their dairies and cheese cathedrals, and mongers in their maturing rooms. As the season begins to turn and evenings ask for something warmer, this feels like the natural next part of the story: less about how cheese is made, more about what to do when you suddenly need some.
Sometimes you want to cook. Sometimes you want cheese on toast.
This is for the second kind of evening. Perhaps you are feeding someone you love, perhaps they have gone home, perhaps there was never anyone else coming. It asks very little of you and gives back something close to a hug: hot bread, molten cheese, mustard, pepper and the sharp interruption of a pickle.
Calling it a recipe may be generous. It is closer to good advice.
We use sourdough because there is always a piece left from yesterday. Read sourdough as whatever bread you have. The same goes for the cheese. Quicke’s cheddar would be wonderful, as would Lincolnshire Poacher, Westcombe Cheddar, something continental or the collection of ends waiting in the fridge. This is a good place for all of them.
Nothing here is fixed. Add more mustard if you want heat, stout if you want depth, cream if you want softness. The only essential instruction is to eat it while the cheese is still moving.
Serves one generously, or two in need of a little looking after.
You will need
2 thick slices of yesterday’s bread
Butter, for spreading
200g cheese, grated
1 tablespoon soft butter
1 tablespoon stout, cider, milk or cream
1 tablespoon Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Colman’s English mustard or Dijon mustard
A few grinds of black pepper
A pinch of cayenne pepper
A little freshly grated nutmeg
Something sharp to eat alongside, perhaps a cornichon, pickled onion or spoonful of chutney
Hot sauce, if you keep such things close
More suggestion than method
Toast the bread on both sides, then spread it lightly with butter.
Put the grated cheese in a bowl. If the strands are long or coarse, chop them a little finer. Add the soft butter, your chosen stout, cider, milk or cream, the Worcestershire sauce and mustard. Season with black pepper, cayenne and nutmeg, then mix everything into a rough paste.
Taste it. This is the useful moment. Add more mustard, pepper or Worcestershire sauce if that is what you want.
Spread the cheese mixture thickly over the toast, taking it all the way to the edges. Place under a fiercely hot grill until the cheese is molten, blistered and beginning to catch in places.
Eat immediately, with something pickled and a little hot sauce to dip into.
Heaven.