France and the Alps · Volume 12, Choucroute, Bière de Garde and the Double Border
Welsh
The Nord
Illustration
- Time
- 20 minutes
- Researched
- 10 sources cited
Melted cheddar, sometimes partly or wholly replaced with Maroilles for a stronger, more distinctly northern version, is melted slowly with beer, mustard and pepper, poured over toasted bread and thick ham, then gratinéed, almost always served with chips and often a fried egg, welsh complet. The specific claim that this dish arrived in the Nord "via the Côte d'Opale" from Wales rests on a single low-authority source and is not corroborated by any historical account found.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. 20 minutes at 180°C.
Ingredients
- 45 cl brown beer, from Thiérache or the like
- 600 g Maroilles, in pieces
- 6 slices country bread
- 1 tsp mustard
- 6 thick slices white ham
- to taste pepper
- 6 eggs
To serve
- to serve salad and homemade chips
Method
- Heat the oven to 180°C.
- Heat the beer until it boils and foams.
- Toast the bread and spread it with mustard. Lay a slice of ham on each and set each in its own gratin dish.
- Melt the Maroilles in the beer over a low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add pepper.
- Pour the cheese over the bread and bake 20 minutes, until golden.
- Meanwhile fry the eggs, and set one on each welsh as it comes out of the oven. Serve hot with salad and chips.
Notes
The recipe is Cédric Christophe's, chef at the Collège Pierre-Ronsart in Hautmont, as the Département du Nord published it (1 February 2023); it is all Maroilles. Le Ch'ti Marché's cheddar welsh for four melts 400 g cheddar with 4 tbsp beer and 4 tbsp mustard, soaks the untoasted bread in 250 ml beer, and bakes 10 minutes at 180°C. Neither uses half and half, and neither uses a grill.
What a modern chef changes
The Maroilles given room to actually taste of something.
Rung 5.
Method
- Use a genuinely well-affined Maroilles for at least half the cheese, sourced from a specialist rather than a supermarket, so the sauce carries real hazelnut-and-brick-dust depth rather than reading as generic melted cheddar with a beer note.
- Melt over the gentlest possible heat, never letting it boil. A hard-boiled cheese-and-beer sauce splits and turns grainy; patience here is the entire technique.
- Fry the frites in beef fat, twice, if attempting them from scratch, the same double-fry method this cuisine uses everywhere: first bath at 150 to 175°C to cook through, second at 180°C shortly before serving to crisp.