Eating devilled sausages with mash is like receiving a hug from the inside.
When tasked with creating a pureed version of devilled sausages, Anton Leyland went straight to the test kitchen and started playing with ingredients – a task he likens to sorting through his personal flavour bank.
“I like to make traditional favourites with a twist – smoked fish cakes, devilled sausages, smoked pork. Classic flavours that hark back to the past,” says The Pure Food Co’s consulting chef, who has worked at top restaurants in Australia and New Zealand and is known for his experimental flavour combinations. “It’s creating something old but new. There is a bit of magic behind it, nothing artificial.”
For the Devilled Sausage Puree, the key was to evoke the dish’s distinctive sweet and spicy sauce, which owes its flavour to onion, garlic and apples. Anton added Worcester sauce, mustard powder, rosemary and thyme. He cooked beef mince in the sauce and then blended the whole lot together to evoke memories of mum’s kitchen.
The resulting dish is velvety smooth and delicious on its own or served alongside some Sweet Potato Mash Puree and Creamy Broccoli Puree.
While Anton was brought on board to get the flavour of The Pure Food Co’s texture-modified dishes right, he had to make sure the food was also nutrient-dense. Each product is boosted with extra protein, fibre and energy from plant sources to support health and wellbeing. (The Creamy Broccoli Puree, for example, has more than two-and-a-half times the protein of regular cooked broccoli and five times the energy.)
“It’s an enjoyable process,” says Anton of learning how to make nutrient-packed purees that satisfy the taste buds. “And it all harks back to that pure food.”
