The Hammock Papers: Steadying.

02 December 2025

Steadying.

In our house, this evening marks the beginning of Welsh Rarebit season, an ancient and sacred rite.

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients

A knob of butter
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp Coleman's mustard powder
½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 c Guinness
A very long splash of Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. mature strong Cheddar, grated (Look for English farmhouse types such as Montgomery's, Keen's, Quicke's, or my favorite, Lincolnshire Poacher)
4 pieces of toast, preferably from homemade bread

Method

Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and let this cook together until it smells biscuity but is not browning.
Add the mustard powder and cayenne pepper, stir in the Guinness and Worcestershire sauce, then gently melt in the cheese.
When it’s all of one consistency, remove from the heat, pour out into a shallow container and allow to set. Spread on toast thickly and place under the broiler. Eat when bubbling golden brown.
This makes a splendid savoury at the end of your meal, washed down with a glass of Port, or as a steadying snack.

I highly recommend the addition of Nueske's Triple-Thick Butcher Cut bacon.

Repeat as needed. Recipe courtesy of Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Thanks to Grandma Chenoweth.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL