When I worked in Greece for a well known kids company, one of the many empty promises that lured me into 6 weeks of pure hell was the promise of a staff canteen. Previously, when I worked in France, the whole shopping for and cooking your own food situation got a bit awkward. Not only were we all too mortal to be bothered cooking anything other than mash with bacon and onions by dinner time, no one had a car and we cycled the few miles to the nearest town Nevez with a kiddie carrier attached to the bike to put all our shopping in, making it that much less fun when you impulsively go two bottles of customer wine down and want to buy a giant melon ‘because it will be funny’.

So yes, among the many things promised by this well known kids company, food and time off were two things we never got. Well we did get food, but I’m unsure if it was edible. The Russian canteen lady was about as good a source of information as TMZ. ”What meat is that?”

”Meat”

Oh of COURSE, sorry. But the worst thing was the bland breakfast. Bread and a boiled egg. Maybe some fruit or some mixed up cereal. But mostly, bread and a boiled egg. After a couple of weeks of boiled eggs, I got to the point whereby I started to hallucinate that humpty dumpty was trying to kill me. So I decided to spice up my egg, and I carried tobasco around in my handbag pretty much everywhere.

It became such a habit, that when I now see Encona Hot Pepper Sauce somewhere I pick one up and put it in my handbag, for future use. I’ve got some stashed at work as well. I’m not sure how it all happened, but anything less than food that blows your mouth off doesn’t interest me.

I tried some marinades the other day, Jerk Chicken and Korean BBQ, but I do still love the sauces you accompany food with. When I had the opportunity to try the Amraillo Chilli Sauce, I was really pleased. I do like a sauce that is red hot, fire brigade, emergency situation foodstuffs, but I do also love a nice flavour.

You know the South Americans do good food. You only need to pop over to a street stall at Notting Hill Carnival to get the wide variety tastes anything south of Mexico offer. So this Peruvian treat went down really well.

For those a bit less adventurous (or weird) than me, it’s not as spicy, but it packs a lot of flavour. It will keep you guessing. It’s a little bit creamy, and spicy at the same time. We dared my mate at work to put it on her melon and eat it in the staff room on lunch at work, but I would suggest this would go a lot better with either chicken, or to spice up your plain rice.

I literally did not realize how many sauce Encona did! you can find their range here: http://www.enconasauces.co.uk/