Stokes Sauces: Remember, remember, great taste in November

Penny for the Guy

http://www.stokessauces.co.uk/page/sauces/ketchup-and-sauces

For 400 years Guy Fawkes Night has been marked with bonfires, fireworks and festivities.

This was the day in 1605 that a group of Catholic conspirators had their plan to blow up Parliament foiled just hours before the fuse to the gunpowder was lit. Half the plotters were killed in a shoot-out. The rest, including Guy Fawkes, were tried for treason, found guilty and executed in January 1606.

In 1910, firework manufacturers started branding the occasion as ‘Fireworks Night’ to cash in on the act. Their sales increased by 20%.

Enthusiastic children would create a Guy Fawkes effigy, carting it around asking for ‘a penny for the Guy’ to help them buy fireworks.

Today, community and home firework displays are followed by something warming to eat, to re-stoke the energy spent sharing appreciative ooos and aahhhs on a smoke-filled night.

Here are some tasty ideas you might like - to keep you warm this year.

Light the blue touchpaper and...

Big Pot Chilli

You'll need:

1 kg of minced beef
2 onions, diced
4 sticks of celery, chopped
2 red peppers, chopped
4 garlic cloves, grated
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
2 tins of kidney beans, rinsed and drained
250 ml of red wine
2 tbsp of dark chocolate, grated
2 tsp of chilli powder
2 tbsp of Stokes Chilli Jam
4 tbsp of Stokes Brown Sauce
4 tbsp of Stokes Chipotle Ketchup
2 x beef stock bouillons

Here's how:

In a large pan soften the onion, pepper, celery and garlic for 5 minutes then add the minced beef. Cook, stirring occasionally until the meat is browned throughout.

Stir in the chilli powder, Chilli Jam, Brown Sauce and Chipotle Ketchup then add the tins of tomatoes with the stock bouillons and red wine. Let this simmer for 30 minutes, melt in the chocolate and add the beans.

Simmer gently for a further 30 minutes then taste for flavour and heat. You can let this stand whilst enjoying the fireworks and warm it up before you eat.

Served with a doorstop slice of bread or rice, you and your guests will soon warm up. Or, use it as a filling for jacket potatoes.

Jacket Potatoes

Who doesn't love the crispy skin and fluffy middle of a baked potato. A baked sweet potato is a very fine thing too, soft and succulent on the inside.

The fillings can be as simple or as complex as you like, but one thing they have got to be is tasty. With Stokes in the cupboard, 'great taste' is only a short reach away.

First up, we have a baked sweet potato. For the filling we've shredded cooked chicken breast and stirred equal amounts of Stokes Real Mayonnaise and Stokes Chipottle Ketchup into it. This gives it the gently smokiness and chipotle heat of the ketchup and velvety smooth texture of the mayonnaise.

Beans - the classic. With cheese, awesome. Try mixing a spoonful or two of Stokes Tomato Ketchup into the beans as they are cooking to build on the flavour. Add Stokes Original BBQ Sauce for a sweet smokiness. You can take it one step further by cooking, chopping and adding smoked bacon with the BBQ Sauce to create instant Boston Beans.

The third is a Shepherd's Jacket, the fluffy potato being filled with minced lamb cooked with thyme, onion, grated carrot and Stokes Tomato Ketchup. Go a step further adding sweet date puree and spices in the form of Stokes Brown Sauce whilst cooking out the meat. Finish under the grill to melt some cheese - it's a sparkler.

You can't put too much cheese in a jacket potato as the fourth example shows. The easiest way to do this is to make a cheesy rarebit sauce using Cheddar, Red Leicester and perhaps a stringy Edam-type cheese. Stir Stokes Chilli Jam into the rarebit sauce and spoon it into your jackets.