A Matter of Taste Mini Sauces

Gentleman’s Choice

Frankly, I find myself a little baffled at the proposition.  What, after all, is a ‘mini sauce’.  Sauces should, of course, be served in just the right quantity, from a sauce dispenser, usually a covered bowl, ornamental for preference and, if you are really doing things properly, originally serving some entirely different function.  The silver plated severed head of a sworn enemy used to be all the go in mess halls of yore, although these days polite society is apt to frown on such things, meaning that instead, no dinner table is complete without the head of some beast that one has slaughtered in a gamesmanlike fashion as a novelty sauce dispenser.  Vegitarianites may protest all they like, but a dollop of brown sauce on one’s kippers of a morning tastes so much better when dispensed from the silvered skull of that badger you killed with a snooker cue after it had gotten into the roses.  Red sauce is, of course, served from the skull of a fox.

Mustard is tricky, and to be respected.  Best kept in a simple scallop shell.

Those requiring French mustard are quite free to obtain it after first leaving the table, house, and country.

The novelty sauce dispenser is nothing new, in the 1970s no self respecting working class café, the sort of place that lorry drivers used to congregate for sandwiches and much tea to fortify themselves for the long drive ahead, was complete without a tomato sauce bottle shaped like a large tomato.

The point is, of course, that a small bowl, or selection of bowls, and corresponding spoons, are quite sufficient for any appetite.

The exception is, of course, to be found in hotels.

Is there anything quite so delightful as those wee jars of sauce that the room service chap, or even chapess, brings when delivering one a late supper?  The hospitality industry loves miniatures, from mini-bars to soaps the size of postage stamps.  In the right place, at the right time, the miniature sauce pot is not just perfectly acceptable, it is perfection.

Player’s Choice

 Right.  First things first.  There are two sauces, red and brown.  Or, if you are from the North, brown and red.  Sauces come in bottles.  They do not come in jars, nor poncy bowls.  They do not come in plastic packets that some, in a misguided attempt to introduce foreign language into the sauce debate in the false apprehension that foreign equals sophisticated or better, describe as ‘sachets’.  Plastic packets of sauce are an abomination and are fit for only one thing, to be discarded with contempt, or of course, much more likely, hoarded in a kitchen draw but never, ever, used.

Sauce comes in bottles.  It also comes out of bottles, if you shake really, really hard.

Surely there is no experience so beatific as a child as grasping an adult sized sauce bottle in two child sized hands and shaking it in the up and down motion of a crazed campanologist, only to be delivered of a puddle of sauce on your plate which was, of course, the objective all along.

Why bother with a spoon and a jar when one can, with experience, practice, and dedication to ones art, direct the jet of sauce under steady pressure from a plastic bottle with all the accuracy of a sauce sharpshooter.  Or with a well timed sequence of sharp spanks to the bottom of a bottle, distribute globs of goodness ‘pon the plate.  Yes, the bottle is the right receptacle.

Novelty dispensers have their place.  For the squishy plastic tomato that place was Wimpy and that time was 1978.  It was glorious but let us move on.  Sauce bottles in cafes should properly have a dried crust around the top of the bottle.  This is revolting, but nobody expects you to eat it so stop fucking moaning.

Finally, brands.  I have no time for brands, usually.  But occasionally there’s one that simply tastes like quality.  And since those bastards at HP started manufacturing their ‘sauce’ abroad, and so ruined it for everyone forever, there’s only one sauce that goes on my sausage sarnie.  ‘Daddies’.

The cafe keeps a bottle behind the counter for me.

Quality.

A little bit on the side, or on the top

I adore chips.  I adore their many varieties.  There’s your basic chip, essentially a (thick) slice of potato, deeply fried.  Then you have your french fry, and finally, for the aesthetes in the crowd, the crinkle cut.  The shape of the chip is just the start of the journey, as it’s the preparation that makes such a difference.  Rule of thumb, the more of an animal you use in the preparation of a vegetable related product, the better the outcome.  That’s why double-dipped larded fat-and-grease loaded chips, cooked in cow, are the best sort of chips.
Of course, some see chips simply as the enabler of the main event – salt and vinegar.  Salt is of course essential for human life, as without it food would be bland, leading to the sort of ‘what’s the point’ ennui that may not be destructive on its own but, when combined with floppy hair, poetry and the ready availability of laudanum, can prove disastrous.
The chief role of vinegar as a dressing is to be sluiced over hot chips with the resulting cloud of scent wafted into a confined area, making everyone in that area want chips.  Now!
As a result of being deeply fried, chips formally cease to become vegetables and are granted honorary ‘actual food’ status.  But we should acknowledge that vegetables do have a part to play in the world of dressings and sauces.  That role is to assist delivery of thousand-island and other brightly coloured, tangy, vegetable-taste-disguising dressings.  Naturally, certain protocols have to be observed.  Stood at a salad bar with a spoon, wolfing down ranch?  Freak.  Stood at that same salad bar using a stick of celery to scoop and swallow?  Better.  But do remember to bite the end of the celery off rather than sucking the sauce off of the end and going back for more.  Such double-dipping can result in lifetime bans, even from a Harvester.  At a Berni Inn, it simply results in a good shoeing ‘out the back’.
Cooks occasionally get bent out of shape when a customer salts their food before even tasting it.  They should of course realise that this is infinitely preferable to the strangled cry of ‘agggh, this is shit!’  >sprinkle sprinkle< ‘Mummmm, much better.’ from the dining room.  If salt wasn’t so important we wouldn’t have fought wars over the stuff, and Waitrose wouldn’t sell seven different varieties of what is, at the end of the day, tasty aggregate. 

There’s nothing wrong with prepping your plate in anticipation of your meal.  Any sort of meat dish requires mustard, of course.  Coleman’s English Mustard to smear on the edge of your plate, French wholegrain to remain securely in its jar until the end of days.  Lamb is a game-changer, as you are now able to add mint-sauce to your greens to taste.  That taste should be ‘largely mint sauce’.
Pepper is an oddity.  The place for pepper is usually in the preparation rather than the consumption.  Back in the seventies pepper came in the form of a dust so fine it was one step away from being best applied by aerosol.  A spirited session with a pepper shaker could produce a cloud of the stuff that, if inhaled, led to the sort of reaction unseen since the Regency period when a new consignment of ‘Stonkers’s Very Strong Gentlemen’s Snuff’ landed on the docks.  Now pepper comes in chunks as folk wrestle with their grinders before giving up and reaching for the salt.  The only place where pepper is successfully served is in certain restaurants, where a man with, usually, tight trousers will sidle up to you and, holding an object which if it were coloured pink would see him arrested for indecency, will discretely grind to your satisfaction.
In an age when food manufacturers seek to pre-load edible excitement by helpfully including 125% of our daily salt, fat and sugar requirement in one portion of ready meal, we still love a dollop of sauce.  That’s why I live in hope of one day being offered the sauce menu when taking my seat in a restaurant and, when deciding on ‘the Daddies’, having the waiter murmur ‘excellent choice sir’.