Product Review: Sainsbury's Spicy Pepper Pasta Sauce
Tasty Tomato Pasta!
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Hot Sauce For Pasta?
You know, I could start off this review proclaiming 'Mamma mia, but this is good sauce,' and all kinds of slightly embarrassing things. If I had, like, no class at all. But no! I will refrain! I will show mercy and spare all readers my quaint cliched meanderings, and at least attempt to get right to the point. It's a basic pasta sauce, there's a lot of tomatoes in it, it's spicy. You put it on pasta. Er, does that cover everything? (Begins sidling out.)
I guess not, not really. If you like pasta and you like pasta sauce - pasa n sauce, it's a classic combo! - and you like food that is spicy, and you like peppers... then that's why you bought, will buy or are considering buying this sauce. Good idea or not? Do you get what you can reasonably expect, considering the label?
How spicy is spicy, though, define your terms. If you like a vindaloo and Stagg's chilli and can eat a raw habanero without blinking or your eyes watering... then you may conceivably be a little disappointed in Sainsbury's Spicy Pepper Pasta Sauce. As spicy goes? It's not all that, is what I'm saying. Not that it doesn't have a little heat, a little fire going on. A little. For me, who feels pretty much that a gentle korma or dopiaza in curries is going it some, and quite adventurous, then it's quite sufficiently hot and throat-searing. Perhaps a little too much, if paired with a carbohydrate heavy food like pasta. I prefer hot sauces with protein rich accompaniments: it cools the fire and seems a more natural marriage to me, instinctively.
Have to say my other half loved it, though! Then, he's more of a Stagg's chilli extra-extra-hot 'see me beat my chest and eat all the hot things' type of a macho man than I am. Flavour? As far as flavour goes, rather than hotness, I'd give it at least a B+: I don't think Sainsbury's actually make a bad pasta sauce. I'll just be going for the garlic and onion one next time.
But does the pepper content make Sainsbury's Spicy Pepper Pasta Sauce especially vitaminacious and extra good for you? What do peppers have going for them as a vegetable. (Or a fruit. I do get confused in some areas about that whole classification thing.) Certainly it's not hard to find books or peer-reviewed journal articles hailing hot peppers as nutrient rich, full of such exotic goodies as carotenoids and flavonoids.1 Has to be a bonus!
References.
1. H Baea, GK Jayaprakashaa, J Jifona, BS Patila. Variation of antioxidant activity and the levels of bioactive compounds in lipophilic and hydrophilic extracts from hotpepper (Capsicum spp.) cultivars Food Chemistry. 134(4), 15/10/2012, pp1912–1918