A historical English Sauce, straight from Dinner at the Mandarin to the shelves at Waitrose.
Say, have you ever seen one of these:
Of course you have. It’s the Black Foot Pork Chop they serve at Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental. Thousands of photos like this flooded the internet in early 2011 when Heston’s London restaurant opened. I think they turned away anyone without a digital camera.
The serving has been tweaked slightly since opening, but it’s always been accompanied on the menu by Robert Sauce.
The Black Foot Pork Chop was the favourite of our main courses -and after a repeat visit it still is. As well as the quality of ingredients and cooking technique, we thought what really made the dish stand out was the Robert Sauce that accompanied it. (It’s also utterly hilarious if, like me, you’re smutty and immature and visit Dinner with a friend called Robert).
The taste (and the smut) of Robert’s Sauce can now be enjoyed at home thanks to the Heston from Waitrose range.
Product: Heston from Waitrose Beef & Dijon Mustard Sauce (200g)
Price: £2.29
Availability: Very good
THE PRODUCT
Package presentation is standard amongst the range, and thus still feels like a premium product. Unlike cheaper supermarket stock pouches this is firm to the touch rather than squidgy when you pick it up from the chiller cabinet, a reassuring sign of a proper stock.
Here it is as a still-firm gelatinous mass after being squeezed out of the pouch:
Drop the jellified lump into a pan and simmer until hot. Then pour onto whatever you’re having.
To help us appreciate the sauce we chose to serve it with the simplest thing we could think of – bangers and mash. (Yes, yes. Made to a simplified version of Heston’s perfection recipe).
VERDICT
Heston’s Beef & Dijon Mustard Sauce tasted like nothing so much as a very rich and complex oxtail soup. Reading the (long) ingredient list reveals veal and chicken stock in there as well, but beefy flavours are what come through most.
That richness means you don’t need a lot of it. We figured the 200ml serving could easily satisfy 4 people. And I say this as someone who likes his Sunday roast in a paddling pool of gravy.
Like much in the good half of the Heston from Waitrose range, this is a great and relatively inexpensive way to gastrify (?!?!) a simple weeknight supper.
SIDE NOTE:
Our simplified version of Heston’s perfection bangers & mash recipe was a massive success, and incredibly easy to achieve.
Potatoes were thrown in the oven to bake, 30 minutes later we popped the sausages into our eBay-bought sous-vide rig. This meant at serving-up time all we needed to do was pluck out the sausages, pat-dry and then fry them.
Mash was scooped out of the skin and mixed with (a worrying amount of) butter and warm milk. A quick rinse meant the potato pan could be used to heat the Robert Sauce.
For one of Heston’s perfection recipes that’s preposterously simple!
Further Reading:
BigSpud – A concise and equally glowing review from Gary.
