A report from Heinz popped into my inbox yesterday. It was commissioned ‘to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the Heinz’.
The phrase ‘the Heinz’ makes the company sound rather like The Hoff but, among the puff, there were some intriguing facts and figures, especially regarding regional variations. Apparently, the average Brit has more than five bottles of sauce in their kitchen cupboard, however Northern Ireland are the biggest sauce collectors with 5% having a whopping 20-30 bottles in their cupboards. If Northern Irish cupboards are anything like mine then five of those sauces will be regularly reached for and the other 25 will have sell-by dates stretching back to the last century.
Perhaps not surprisingly for a survey commissioned by Heinz, the report found that 40% of Brits say that their Tomato Ketchup is their favourite sauce. The survey concludes that ‘a meal isn’t complete without a dollop of our favourite sauce’.
Hmmm. I wonder what the response would be if you asked Gordon Ramsay if he would go along with the findings of the survey and put ketchup bottles on the tables of his more frou frou restaurants?
One restaurant where you are highly unlikely to find a ketchup bottle on the table is Glasgow’s La Parmigiana. Their head chef, Peppino Camilli, has just been nominated as Chef of the Year in the Scottish Chef Awards.
Mr Camilli, said, “My recipes are 100% Italian. I cook pasta today the way my grandmother taught me back in Monte Prandone.”
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