For Sunday’s dinner, I wanted to try out a sauce from my new book, “Sauces – Savoury and Sweet” by Michelle Roux (Snr). It’s a great collection of about 250 sauces, and I’m looking forward to trying as many of them as I can.

For this meal, I went for:

Pork Medallions – 2 per person (depending on size), fried in oil and butter for about 8 minutes, with 2 chopped leeks added right near the end. Can’t beat the flavour of pork and leek, and leeks cooked in butter are the best.

Mashed potato – (Maris piper potatoes, cream, butter, salt, pepper – the usual)

Cumberland sauce – Now the book said it was a cold sauce but I wanted to try it warm (impatient I know). After sweating a medium shallot and then reducing 4tbsp of red wine vinegar (down to about a third), I added 100ml beef stock, 50 ml port, 2 tbsp redcurrant jelly, 1tsp worcestershire sauce and the juice of an orange. Leaving it to simmer for 20 minutes and then seiving produced a great, dark, rich sauce with a nice kick to it.

The sauce went brilliantly with the pork medallions, and livened up the mash. I can see how it would work well with cold meats. It had a hint of heat from worcestershire sauce, and the richness of the port and redcurrant was great.

My first sauce was a great success and hopefully the first of many.