#5 HP FOODS LTD

With the London Olympics in full swing, we’ve been inspired to try some traditional British cooking here at home. Enter HP brown sauce, a British condiment whose closest American equivalent is A1 sauce, or maybe barbecue sauce. HP sauce was invented in 1899, and the “HP” stands for Houses of Parliament, which began serving the sauce in its restaurant in the early twentieth century. Today HP calls itself “the best” brown sauce and “everyone’s favourite.” Certainly Queen Elizabeth agrees; HP Foods holds a Royal Warrant as “Purveyors of HP Sauces.”

Let me begin by saying that—if I’m going to eat something with a name as dubious as brown sauce—it had better be the best brown sauce. I don’t want to eat the one everyone agrees is the worst brown sauce. You see what I’m saying? When I first got my hands on a bottle of brown sauce, I regarded it with no small amount of trepidation, and I think that’s due entirely to the name. What exactly is brown sauce anyway? The simple answer is tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, and seasonings. Add to that some tamarind (that one came out of left field, don’t you think?) and you get the complex flavor combination that is brown sauce.

I like this stuff. I’m not exactly drinking it out of the bottle, but I’m also not opposed to the flavor it adds to my cooking. When I was first looking over the bottle and trying to decide what to do with it, the back label suggested some ideas. Why not try it in cottage pie? Why not, indeed? For those of you already confused by this dish called cottage pie, I’ll explain to you what was explained to me last summer: this is shepherd’s pie. Our friends used to make shepherd’s pie all the time until they moved to London and realized that shepherd’s pie there is made with lamb, not ground beef. The version with ground beef is called cottage pie in England. Technically we didn’t even make that. We’ve been funny about ground beef lately, so we used ground turkey and called our version pilgrim pie. I made up my own basic recipe (below). It was a crowd pleaser—even picky Nathan ate three helpings. Warm British comfort food isn’t the best food to eat in Chicago in August, but we’ll definitely recycle this recipe for the fall.

After our successful attempt at pilgrim pie, we decided to check out more recipes on the HP website. For dinner tonight we tried the recipe for “Bacon Buttie.” Even though the accompanying picture depicts a sandwich with about a quarter of a cup of brown sauce dripping down its sides, the recipe proclaims this sandwich “delicious to eat on the go!” (Maybe if you’re wearing a maroon shirt and don’t mind smelling like vinegar and tamarind for the rest of the day). These recipes are written in a kind of conversational slang that I find very entertaining. Take, for instance, the directions in the “Bacon Buttie” recipe that you should “get dry-cure bacon if you can so you’re buying bacon, not water and getting you the tastiest bacon in your buttie.” The recipe also suggests making a salsa of tomatoes, parmesan cheese, coriander, salt, and pepper to go on top. I guess that’s one way to make salsa. We made our bacon sandwiches with lettuce and tomato on whole wheat bread, but in the end, only Adam was brave enough to douse his with brown sauce.

“It’s tangy,” he said after the first bite.

Part of me totally wants to recommend HP sauce to you. Still, I’m troubled by something I noticed on the bottle the first time I opened it: it’s made in the Netherlands. That struck me as strange since there’s a picture of the Houses of Parliament right on the front label. It turns out that this move to Dutch production is quite recent. HP Foods was bought out by Heinz in 2006, and the company sought to consolidate all of its food-making operations. Heinz soon announced plans to close the longstanding HP Foods factory in Birmingham and lay off its 120 employees. Despite a huge outcry in Great Britain and calls to ban the sauce from the restaurant in Parliament, the company moved forward with the closure and exported all production to Holland. This is made more complicated by the fact that Heinz is also a longstanding Royal Warrant holder.

Even though the Royal Warrant is displayed prominently on bottles of HP sauce, I don’t see it on the Royal Warrant Holders Association website. I couldn’t figure out why, so I emailed Chris Page, the company contact listed on the RWHA website. Ms. Page wrote me back quickly and assured me that the company’s warrant was renewed in 2010 and will be valid until at least 2016. I was surprised to see in her email signature that she is vice president controller for Heinz Europe but still took the time to answer a customer query. And her office? It’s in the UK. From the politeness of company personnel to the renewal of the warrant four years after Heinz moved its production to another country, I get a sense that HP remains a decidedly British brand.

If the Queen is still enjoying HP sauce in her cottage pie, I suppose we can too.

Where to buy: My bottle came from England, but you can find HP brown sauce stateside at World Market.  

Pilgrim Pie

2 T butter

1 pkg. ground turkey

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

4 green onions, chopped

½ cup chicken stock

4 T HP brown sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

3 cups mashed potatoes

Saute celery, onion, and carrots in butter over medium heat for about five minutes. Add ground turkey and cook until meat is no longer pink and vegetables are tender. Stir in brown sauce, chicken stock, and green onions. Cook for an additional ten minutes over medium-high heat, until sauce has thickened slightly.

Pour mixture into the bottom of an 8” square baking dish. Top with mashed potatoes and cook in 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.