Premier Inn Purple Sauce review

When I was a child, Saturday lunch was always a version of a fry-up or beans on toast (macaroni cheese on toast for me as I don’t like baked beans) – accompanied by red sauce, or brown sauce. We never called it ketchup, and I can’t even remember the proper name of brown sauce (HP sauce?) – it was always red sauce, brown sauce. Well, now there’s a new one: purple sauce.

 

Created by Premier Inn with the help of a chef called Ed Baines, Purple Sauce is designed to go with the traditional English cooked breakfast, served at Premier Inns. It has a blackberry base, with other ingredients including crushed chillies, toasted cumin, smoked salt and cider vinegar. It has no artificial colours, flavourings or additives, which is always good to know.

 

 

They sent me a bottle to try out – luckily my parents were visiting and I was planning a full English breakfast (it’s not something my boyfriend and I often have, as I’m not keen on most elements – I’d rather just have a sausage sandwich!). I made sausages, bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast and baked beans, and put this bottle of sauce on the table next to the ketchup. I didn’t have any brown sauce so I waited to see which one my dad would reach for first.

Everyone was quite willing to try it and the reaction was a positive one- unusual, but in a good way. My parents said they weren't sure they would buy a whole bottle of it if it was sold in the supermarket but would definitely have it if they were staying in a Premier Inn.

 

It has got a slightly smoky flavour, which goes well with sausages; I can see this working nicely with pulled pork too. I even wondered about using it in a sweet dish, such as the filling for a pastry tart, but I didn't have time to try this idea out before going on holiday!

Thanks to Premier Inn for sending the sauce to review.

Steak with Chimmichurri

Still on the theme of meals inspired by the World Cup, here's something that I would happily eat at any time.Chimmichurri is a green sauce served with meat such as steak and is a typical dish in Argentina. It is made with chopped parsley, garlic, olive oil, oregano and white wine vinegar. All you do is crush the garlic and chop the parsley and mix everything in a small bowl. I did use a recipe but you can also adjust the quantities to taste - I did a tablespoon of chopped parsley, one clove of garlic, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp dried oregano and 1 tbsp vinegar. Mix well.

 

Cook the steak to your liking and serve with the sauce over the top. Serve with chips, obvs.

 

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for his World Cup challenge.

Smoked mackarel fishcakes

I had some leftover mackarel pate from Boxing Day and some leftover mashed potato from dinner so I decided to make fishcakes.

I would normally just use the fish but in this case I had homemade mackarel pate - which was just smoked mackarel and soft cheese - and decided that would work just as well in a fishcake.

I simply mixed it with the mashed potato and added some herbs and seasoning.

I then shaped the mixture into patties and dipped them in breadcrumbs. Sometimes you might need to coat the fishcakes in flour then beaten egg to get the breadcrumbs to stick, but because I was using pate rather than fish the mixture was already wet enough for the breadcrumbs to stick.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until crisp.

 I took these into work for lunch along with some homemade low fat tartare sauce, which I made by mixing Quark, fat free fromage frais, lemon juice, seasoning and capers.

I am sending this to the No Waste Food challenge, hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen and Turquoise Lemons, as their challenge this month is finding ways to use up leftover mashed potato.

I am also sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours. She has rebranded the Frugal Food Friday challenge and is running it with Camilla from Fab Food 4 All. The idea remains the same - to share recipes which are thrifty and help you save money, and using up leftovers certainly does that.

Gammon Steaks with Sloe Gin Sauce

I'm not a big gin drinker but have occasionally enjoyed a gin and tonic if there's a decent twist of lime, but sloe gin is something I don't really drink - though I do have a bottle of homemade sloe gin in the cupboard that my friend Jane gave me, and it's almost empty, so it obviously got drunk at some point!

The theme for this month's Baking with Spirit is gin, and I knew I'd eaten a few restaurant meals that used sloe gin in a savoury sauce, and decided I wanted to do something similar. My parents were visiting and we'd discussed what they wanted to eat for dinner and settled on gammon steaks, and I decided that a sloe gin sauce would work well with the gammon.

I had a look online for some recipes but ended up not really following one properly and kind of making it up as I went along, though it was pretty simple. Here's what you need to do:
1. Get your mum to cook the gammon steaks and make some mashed potato while you're on your way home from work (!)
2. Pour about 100ml of sloe gin into a pan and add half a beef stock cube and about 100ml of water
3. Bring to the boil and allow to bubble
4. Add about 50 ml double cream
5. Turn down the heat and cook until thickened
6. Serve over gammon, though this would also go well with other meats.

I also got the chance to use a really nifty little gadget my boyfriend bought me for my birthday (or was it last Christmas?). It's an auto-stirrer, so you stand it in a pan of sauce, switch it on and you can go off and do other things without needing to stand over the pan and constantly stir.

It's a great little gadget - it needs four AA batteries and is quite small so will fit even in the smallest pan. It stands upright and has four silicon feet at the bottom so it won't scratch your pan. You switch it on and it rotates and moves around in the pan, to stop your sauce sticking. It's absolutely perfect for anyone who is as impatient as me - I can never be bothered to stand over a pan and stir so often come back to find my sauce has started to stick!

Adding the cream to the sauce

Back in with the auto-stirrer

And here's the sauce poured over the gammon. It was really nice, if you've not had sloe gin before I would liken this more to a red wine sauce than normal gin, and it was nice and creamy and just the right consistency.

I'm sending this to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, as the theme this month is gin. Shame I didn't get a chance to make a cake this month - I've made gin and tonic cupcakes before, which had tonic water in the cake and gin in the icing, which were really nice!