Sauce

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My, oh, my! Sugar high!

Thank you, Moi, for handing me the recipe card that you found recently (see pic). In Mum’s hand, is the recipe for Caramel Sauce. This one, though, is not to be confused with the Linda Landers Caramel Sauce recipe. The former could be termed the ‘lite’ version but as both contain vast proportions of sugar, it really doesn’t matter! Having just tasted a wee swirl atop my ‘lite’ frozen yoghurt, I am definitely soaring in the heady stratosphere of a sugar high. I have very fond memories of scraping the last remnants of melted ice-cream and caramel sauce from my dessert bowl at Sunday lunch (no rude comments, please, about where that led me!).

CaramelRecipeCardCaramel Sauce (lite version!)
Good on ice-cream and keeps soft form in a jar to use as a cake filling or a spread. (Also good for surreptitious larder snacks – eaten by the teaspoon from the jar!). This recipe (thankfully) only makes a small amount (approx. 120g).

Boil 1 cup of light brown sugar with 2 tablespoons milk and 1tablespoon butter for 4 minutes.
Take off fire, add 1 teaspoon vanilla essence and a good squeeze of lemon.
Beat until thick.

Linda LandersLinda Landers’ Caramel Sauce
Truly divine and decadent on vanilla ice-cream. Forms an increasingly gooey thick toffee coating atop the cold ice-cream, and can become hard, depending on your cooking technique.

Bring slowly to the boil: 2 cups packed brown sugar, 2 tablespoons golden syrup, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 cup whipping or double cream.
Boil for 5 minutes. When off the stove beat in 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence.

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CaramelRecipeCard

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Barbecue Sauce

Juliet Dean reminded me of this recipe – a favourite at all barbecues, especially during the days of renovating Longwood in the late 1970’s, when a hoard of volunteer workers and visitors would be fed on the patio – also later, as Dolly recalls, at the large parties that Pat and I hosted during our teenage years. Mum would make a big pot of the sauce because everyone added it liberally to their charred sausages and chops. If anyone has a photo of those days – please load it or send to me to add to this post.

It was/is also really good cold (in fact it improves with a little age!) – nothing like dipping a cold sausage in some cold bbq sauce! It’s really quick and easy to make (you could make a healthier version with fresh organic tomatoes and honey).

Pam’s Barbecue Sauce (origin – possibly Anne Renton?)

50g butter or marg; 1 tablespoon brown sugar; 1 finely chopped onion; 3 tablespoons tomato ketchup or chutney; 2 teaspoons curry powder, 1 tablespoon flour; 1 pint good stock (550ml -ish); a good splash of Worcester Sauce; salt & pepper; (chilli flakes optional).

Melt the butter and fry the onion lightly. Add curry powder and flour, brown sugar and tomato ketchup and stir to a paste. Add the stock, seasoning and Worcestershire sauce; and stir til smooth. Simmer for probably about 15 mins.

(This probably makes a small saucepan-full. Mum didn’t usually make anything in a small quantity – she was always expanding the scale and I can tell by the pencilled in quantities at the side of the recipe that she made it in 4x, 8x and 16x quantities!)

The Patio, 2011

The Patio, 2011 

 

Yum!
Yum!