There was hope to be had!

This is what I could get:

• Salted butter
• Worcestershire sauce  (làjiàngyóu a.k.a. “spicy soy sauce” or 辣酱油 )
• Sinkiang Black Beer (from Urumqi, Xinjiang) and Beer StoutBeer (seriously!)
• Some sort of generic square-edge brownish sandwich bread

And this is what I already had at home:

• Grainy French mustard  (I found no mustard at all in the Chinese supermarket today but the internet says dry mustard does exist here and I’ve found various other prepared mustards around the city)
• Flour
• Table salt (still clumpy)
• Fresh black pepper
• Habanero Tabasco sauce
• A box of long life whole milk (I also used a little semi-skimmed as the whole milk box was almost empty)
• A half block of aged Cheddar from City Shop

However, after considerable online research, I realized two things:

1. You really can’t make Welsh Rarebit/Rabbit without the cheddar cheese because it’s just another way of saying Complicated Boozy Melted Cheese on Toast.
2. Finding the cheese might be an impossible/extortionate/unfair task for anyone in, say, Hebei or Wuxi.

I initially considered making a new batch of fresh cheese and letting it drain longer to get a thicker, denser consistency. However, it’d still be a soft mild cheese and wouldn’t exactly be a reasonable replacement for cheddar. So, I decided to stick with the cheddar and just really reduce the proportions.  I pretty much halved it, just to see if it would work.  And it did. And it makes a little bit of cheese go a long way.

If you’re living in a cheddarless wasteland, I do apologize. Consider this recipe to be an occasional treat for those days when Carrefour is being benevolent and a block of cheddar is magically available and you want something rich and cheesy but don’t want to eat the whole thing at once.

This is how you make the sauce.

Get out your wok and put it on the lowest flame.  Put the butter in and melt it.

When the butter is melted, whisk in the flour, slowly, to make a roux. You basically want to blend the butter and the flour together over the heat, being careful not to brown the flour (it’ll taste burnt).

Once the flour and butter are properly whisked together (it takes 2-3 minutes), blorp in the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper and stir those until it’s a smooth paste. Throw in the beer and keep whisking to combine.

Pour in the milk (or cream, if you have it) slowly, and whisk whisk whisk. Don’t let it burn or stick, which is what will happen if you just let it sit there and burble on the heat. Add the cheese a bit at a time, letting it melt into the sauce. I only used 3/4 of a cup rather than the 1.5 cups in the recipe. It’ll take about 4 minutes for the sauce to thicken up at this stage. Add hot sauce. The recipe calls for 2 drops of it but I used, um, 8 or 10 or so. And I added a lot more black pepper.

When the sauce feels thick enough to be able to be poured over toast without spilling everywhere, take it off the heat. I immediately put mine in a little glass Tupperware bowl so I could easily put the left overs in the fridge.

At some point, you might want to make the toast.

I have a little counter top oven that’s like an overgrown toaster oven and I used the broiler setting (top heat) on high. You could also toast it in a frying pan or wok with a little oil. I toasted both sides, though I don’t know if it is necessary since it goes right back into the oven with the cheese sauce on it.

And, finally, after a few minutes under the hot glare of the toaster oven’s highest heat, we have Cheese On Toast With Booze!

Bon appétit! Afiyet olsun!  慢慢吃！