Sauce - Keep It in the Fridge

 

Most of the door compartments of my tall larder fridge are taken up with sauces. Apparently, everything needs refrigerating when it has been opened and must be used within six weeks or sometimes only four weeks. We often go beyond that, with our general rule of ‘no fur, its fine’ unless it is obviously curdled or changed colour. Mint sauce, full of sugar and vinegar, in a jar with a two year ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ date, would surely not just ‘go off’ if left in the fridge for seven weeks instead of six? If you don’t hear from me for a while, I might have poisoned myself. Joking apart, nothing hangs around for too long, except the seafood sauce that I bought too much of one Christmas. I’d over-estimated the prawn cocktails, again. The name ‘Seafood Sauce', when did that happen? I searched the shelves in our massive, well-stocked Tesco looking for Thousand Island Dressing, in vain, on a rare physical food shop for last minute Christmas stuff.  Seafood Sauce would have to do. Anyway, I’m melon, not prawn cocktail, it is for dinner guests. Someone suggested mixing mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. I haven’t tried it.

Like lots of people, I was brought up in a family which had two sauces, red and brown. My dad loved tomato ketchup and plastered everything with it. He would have swamped his Sunday dinner if he could have got away with it. My mum liked H.P, Brown Sauce, or mustard, but mustard was a powder that needed mixing and that was a lot of faffing for one sausage butty. I was with dad on the ketchup, but only a small amount on the side of my plate and when it was gone, that was it. The glass bottle took ages to pour and my dad would push a knife in to get it going. Those were the days.

I blame Mrs Bridges, the cook from Upstairs, Downstairs, for my desire to make homemade sauces. I’m not a domestic goddess, I’m more for feeding a family or just the two of us these days, by affordable, practical means and I haven’t got a kitchen maid to help either. I love my own cheese sauce, perfect for cauliflower, broccoli or both, but my favourite is seasoned onions and mushrooms in cream with steak or pork. It is from a recipe for Boeuf Stroganoff but seems to work well,

Amongst the fridge door contents is the irreplaceable Heinz Tomato Ketchup, no other will do, and the H.P. Sauce. They were kept in a cupboard when I was a child. I keep Soy sauce and Worcester sauce in a dark cupboard with the vinegar, salt and pepper. I hope they are alright.

Here is Lake District, from Sir John Betjeman,

I pass the cruet and I see the lake
Running with light, beyond the garden pine,
That lake whose waters make me dream her mine.
Up to the top board mounting for my sake,
For me she breathes, for me each soft intake,
For me the plunge, the lake and limbs combine.

I pledge her in non-alcoholic wine
And give the H.P. Sauce another shake.

Sprint of Grasmere, bells of Ambleside,
Sing you and ring you, water bells for me;
You water-colour waterfalls may froth.
Long hiking holidays will yet provide
Long stony lanes and back at six for tea
And Heinz’s ketchup on the tablecloth.

John Betjeman  (1906 – 1984)

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and keep well, Pam x