Nigel Slater's Posh Cheese on Toast

If you're a regular reader, you may have figured that sometimes my husband drives me more than a little nuts with his 'discerning' tastes.  We're like chalk and cheese.  We argue about anything and everything.  But for some reason, after seven years of marriage and nearly nine years, we still manage to rub along together.

There are moments when I really love him.  One such recent moment was a couple of days before Christmas.  We'd not had the best time a few days before with lots of tantrum throwing (the adults this time, not Miss A) and rather unusually, I was permitted the choice of evening telly viewing (before 9pm and probably because there's no football two days before Christmas) so I decided on Nigel Slater's Simple Christmas.

The husband abhors cookery shows.  He despaired while I was on maternity leave as I was constantly Sky plussing back-to-back episodes of CDWM.  The only thing he will remotely tolerate is Celebrity Masterchef.  But it seems only the series when Lisa Faulkner was in it.  I'm sure that's something to do with her previous days as a lads mag starlet.

So I was mightily surprised when he seemed to be actually paying attention to Mr Slater.  And then came the moment when my heart burst with love for him.  You see Nigel was making 'Posh Cheese on Toast'.  It came out from under the grill all hot and bubbly with cheese that you knew would just stretch like soft elastic when you tried to separate bits of bread.  The toast, charred crisply around the edges.  'Do you think I'd like that?' asked the husband.

Call me mean, but I had to chuckle to myself.  The husband won't eat fish at the best of times.  He'll eat Birdseye fish fingers, but offer him a fish supper and he'll go for  steak and kidney pie and a battered sausage.  Even when we've been to Whitby, the home of fish and chips by the sea, he still had a pie and chips.  So despite having seen Nigel flake in a couple of mackerel fillets, he still assumed he might like this recipe.

Give me Cathedral City any day...

He also likes his toast barely brown.  In fact some days (bless him), I think I could just get away with giving him stale bread and telling him its toast.  We have a constant battle over the dial on the toaster with me preferring level five (just this side of charcoal) and him level one (barely warm).

So tonight was the night for me to try this.  Of course, I just made his Double Gloucester on toast first, left him to that and then nuked my own 'posh' cheese on toast a bit later.  And I'm sorry to say, I'm not a fan.  When I want cheese on toast, that is what I want.  Cheese.  And toast.  Not faffed with.  No Worcestershire sauce or anything faffy like that.  Just fat, gloopy, slightly toasted bits of cheese on thick white, burnt-around-the-edges toast.

Don't get me wrong.  I love a good Croque Monsieur or a Croque Madame.  I've never had Welsh Rarebit (*scoots off to add to the list of things to try*) but fish and cheese on toast?  I'll take a rain check next time.  I may have overdone the topping.  It seemed too little to share between two bits of bread, but slightly too much for one.  I couldn't taste the horseradish - but that was my bad for being a wimp and not wanting to overpower it.

I'm sure if I was on a day when I was really in the mood for fish then it might have worked for me.  Today was not one of those days.  And now I have to figure out what to do with the two remaining mackerel fillets currently stinking out my fridge.  Watch this space...

You can watch the video for this recipe here