Saucy Is the Perfect Cookbook to Help You Improve an Otherwise Unimpressive Dish.
Welcome to Cookbook of the Week . This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While searching for a specific recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has its own magic.
You’ve mastered fried chicken, shredded BBQ pork, perfected homemade biscuits, and your grandma’s tortellini recipe is flawless. Some people think a great main course is the ticket to a great meal, but they’re missing the big picture. One of the most important components of a stellar meal is nothing more than using the right sauce, but making a sauce from scratch is a skill set in itself.
Making sauce requires a keen sense of balance, attention to texture, sometimes careful emulsification, and an awareness of proportions. It’s no wonder we often reach into the spice rack on the fridge door; no one wants to ruin a sauce. I think having a helpful sidekick with reliable sauce recipes might be just what we need. That’s why I chose Saucy for my cookbook of the week.
A little about the book
Saucy by Ashley Boyd is a tantalizing book with a wide variety of sauce recipes—herbaceous, spicy, sweet, and umami. This cookbook is designed to complement, not replace, your diet. Even the book’s small size suggests that it’s a team player; a backup dancer that elevates your main cookbook.
The chapters are organized by flavor profile, texture, and sometimes by ingredient, such as creamy or tomato-based. One of my favorite features of this cookbook is the section at the beginning that gives sauce pairings based on your main dish. When I’m setting out to cook lunch or dinner, the first thing I think about is my main dish. Am I having dumplings or a salad today? How do I finish my roast chicken? Once I’ve figured all that out, I can flip through this cookbook and go to the Chicken and Fish pairings section and decide which of the 15 sauces I like.
After you’ve worked your way through several chapters of flavor-packed sauces and toppings, Boyd steps up and provides you with a few classic recipes in case you haven’t quite figured out that part of the main course yet. There are recipes for pancakes, bread pudding, fried chicken, steak, and a few others.
The sauce (and dish) I made this week
I’m a big believer in the power of a well-chosen sauce to take a meal to the next level. However, I rarely make them from scratch. (Unless it’s gravy for mashed potatoes, of course.) So I have to constantly buy sauces and work on my library of condiments in the fridge. Honestly, homemade sauce always tastes better, but I settle for bottled for simplicity.
I took this cookbook review as an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and make my own fresh sauce. It was a tough start; I was interested in almost every sauce I saw in the book. I had some leftover fried chicken, so I figured a sandwich would be a good option. I settled on Lebanese garlic sauce and thought of all the delicious flatbreads and pitas I’d eaten with that spicy garlic sauce. Dinner was in order.
Part of the deciding factor was that this garlic sauce only required four ingredients—garlic cloves, salt, canola oil, and lemon juice—and I already had them all. To make life even easier, I used my Vitamix Ascent X5 to take care of all that finicky emulsifying business. This sauce is a true aioli, and it’s supposed to be bright white, thick, and spreadable, like mayo, but a vampire’s nightmare. Aioli requires patience so it doesn’t break down, like all emulsions. If you don’t have a high-powered blender, I recommend using an immersion blender to make life easier.
I threw all the garlic cloves into the blender along with the salt and blitzed them together until they were fine crumbs. Then I began the process of drizzling in the oil and alternating with lemon juice, scraping down the edges and repeating as instructed in the cookbook.
I may not have picked the funniest or the quickest sauce, but I am confident that I have picked the best sauce for my grilled chicken. This garlic sauce is too strong on its own. It is almost pungent with raw garlic. Bad recipe? No, my friends. This is why sauce making is an art. Sauce should complement the main dish. It should be strong in small doses. You wouldn’t eat hot sauce as a soup. I hope.
I spread thin strips of the creamy garlic sauce down one side of my Lebanese pita and piled the chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, yogurt, and harissa on the other. I was a little worried that the garlic would be too spicy, too raw, and ruin my lunch, but instead, every bite was a victory lap. This is the best version of that pita I could have made. The Lebanese garlic sauce saved my lunch from being just okay . The only reason I don’t have the afternoon blues right now is because this recipe made about 12 ounces of sauce, and I can’t wait to use it again.
A great cookbook that will improve everything you cook
Saucy is a great cookbook for any home cook who has ever had that feeling that something is missing. That feeling that your burger, chicken wing, or salad is on the verge of perfection but inexplicably falls short. You need sauce.
The recipes in this book are mostly simple, with four to ten ingredients, and most are easy to find at major grocery stores. Each one gives you a quick step-by-step process, followed by instructions on how to store that particular sauce. The sauces are very powerful, so you often only need a little. The rest of the recipe can be sealed in a jar to keep in the refrigerator for at least five days, and some for up to three months.
If you see yourself becoming a sauce connoisseur, I suggest you save a few jars of jam so you can keep your collection organized in the fridge. In fact, a good jarred sauce can make a great Father’s Day gift. And why not throw in a copy of Saucy ?
How to buy
Saucy is available as an ebook , but I urge you to pick up the hardcover if you can. It’s wonderfully compact, with some truly mesmerizing photographs. If you have a bookstore near you, leave your computer and see if they have Saucy in the cookbook section. If not, they might be able to order it for you.