This month, The Sauce sets out to cook a Saturday lunch alternative to eating out…

Saturday's are sacred.  They are either carefully booked up in advance with some form of sport, hobby or social engagement or they are stealthily kept free to see what spontaneous whim occurs on the day.  Regardless of the day's occupation, lunch is always at the centre of events.  If you are fortunate enough to be visiting a National Trust property then locally sourced, seasonal food will be served in abundance.  If you are taking a picnic then making a homemade, seasonal lunch couldn't be easier - a thermos of leek and potato soup, some locally bought bread, some favourite cheese and a British pear.  Easy.  However, if you are off the beaten track or hitting the high street it is sometimes a bit more problematic to find a hostelry that sells local, seasonal food.  But find it you will and it should be worth the effort.

There are approximately 53,500 public houses Britain.  Pork scratchings aside, it was the ploughman's lunch that defined pub fayre for at least a couple of centuries. In the 1950s some pubs began to offer hot individual steak and ale pies made on the premises.   In the South East it was common, until recently, for pubs to sell cockles, whelks, mussels and other shellfish to customers during the evening.  Many mobile shellfish stalls would set up near to popular pubs, a practice that still continues in London's East End.  The early nineties saw the arrival of a new concept, the restaurant within a pub.  The jury is still out on the gastropub phenomenan.  Whilst the Michelin guide lists Thai crab beignets, sea bass and coconut chowder and mango crème brûlée as typical dishes to be found in these establishments, there are pubs like the Sportsman in Whitstable where the chef, Stephen Harris, takes the notion of local food to its ultimate, by boiling down sea water to make his own salt.

To avoid disappointment or resigning yourself to a thai goat panini from some ubiquitous coffee chain, the best advice we can give is to do some online research before you go to your destination.  Millions of foodie bloggers are filling cyberspace with reviews on pubs and cafes. Websites such as the Good Food Pages and Eat Local are fabulous resources.If even that involves too much planning remember the following; if the menu says "some dishes may contain nuts" then it is highly likely they do not know where the dishes came from. Also, most pubs and cafes have small kitchens so made-on-the-premises food will tend to be simple or something that can be more-or-less made in one pan.  Jacket potatoes, soup, steak and ale pies all fall within this criteria whereas an English roast does not.

Alternatively, to ensure a seasonal Saturday lunch you could always cook it at home.  It doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming, as The Sauce has discovered with this month's challenge: Potato and Leek soup with Oysters.  Oysters. You either love them or loathe them…

If you are or know a producer that would like to supply to a pub [click here]
Great Inns, a collection of Britain's finest Inns are famous for serving the freshest produce [click here] to see if there is one near you.
The National Trust owns thirty six pubs, all who sell seasonal and local food [click here]
If you are out and about in Oxfordshire and looking for a pub [click here]
If you are out and about in the Lakedistrict [click here]
If you are out and about in Wiltshire [click here]

The Sauce

Potato and Leek Soup with Oysters click here for the recipe

• How readily available were the ingredients?
  All the ingredients were in season. I used potatoes from my farm box and purchased all of the other ingredients easily from the local supermarket. I bought British oysters from Waitrose.  I wrongly presumed that the oysters would be very expensive, when in fact they only cost 55 pence an oyster.


• How easy was it to make and how much time did it take?
  My first impression of the recipe was that it looked a bit fiddly but actually it was quite straightforward, once I had got to grips with the oysters... It took around 40 minutes in total. I didn't have a clue what to do with oysters and have never cooked shellfish before. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher came to my rescue with their Fish book. I managed to prise open a couple of oysters with a small sharp knife but simply couldn't get into the others. I followed another recipe for oyster soup where you steam them open in a small amount of water for 2 minutes. So half of the oysters were cooked and half were raw, as the recipe calls for (my guest  preferred the cooked ones).


• What was the sum total cost of this meal
  £5.00


• How many people did it actually feed?
  I halved the recipe and fed 2 people.


• What did you do with leftovers?
  All the soup was eaten however some oysters were left and thrown away.


• Is there anything you would have done differently?
  I wouldn't do anything differently but I probably won't cook this again.


• What did your guests think of the meal?
  This was only given 5 out of 10. The guest who likes oysters felt that it was a waste of good oysters. The other guest, who does not like oysters, loved the soup having picked the molluscs out.

Although the soup wasn't a huge hit, I found making this dispelled my fear of cooking shellfish and made me realise it is quite accessible and reasonably affordable.

Try the recipe yourself and let us know if you agree with The Sauce by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it