Sauces can make the simple sublime. Whether they’re sweet or savoury, basic or complex, based on butter, oil or purée, they dress our meat and vegetables to create a memorable dish. Here are my favourite sauce recipes.
Ocean Trout with Spicy Onion Sauce Cooking fish almost entirely on the skin protects the delicate flesh, keeping it moist and succulent. The skin usually ends up a bit charred and looking slightly the worse for wear, so I usually present the fish flesh side up. The skin still tastes great and, if you like […]
Salmoriglio Salmoriglio is a simple southern Italian sauce based on olive oil, lemon, garlic and herbs, traditionally oregano. Parsley is often included and sometimes a little finely chopped rosemary or thyme, some recipes add a little anchovy too. Most cooks simply whisk all the ingredients together but, in The River Café Cookbook, Rose Gray and […]
Romesco Sauce Originating in the region of Catalonia, romesco sauce is one of Spain’s most popular sauces with as many variations as there are cooks. It’s very versatile, especially popular with seafood but also delicious with poultry and red meat. The essential ingredients are nuts, tomatoes, garlic, vinegar, olive oil and red peppers. Traditionally, dried […]
Apom Berkuah with Pengat Pisang Apom berkuah with pengat pisang is a popular Singaporean dessert. Apom comes from the word ‘appam’, a southern Indian fermented rice pancake popular in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and berkuah (also written bokwa or bengkua) means to accompany a thick sauce or gravy, in this case the delicious banana-studded coconut […]
Alabama White Sauce While Alabama white sauce is a classic barbecue sauce, it’s also delicious as a dipping sauce for fried food like chicken or fish. It makes a delicious salad dressing too (try it with coleslaw)! It originated at Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, one of America’s oldest pit BBQ establishments, opened in 1925. Bob […]
How To Make Nuoc Mam Cham Fish sauce is the essential condiment in Vietnamese cooking, as salt and pepper are in the west. A bottle sits on the table at every meal and at its simplest it’s poured straight from that bottle. A little chopped chilli is typically served alongside and it’s often blended with […]
Coriander & Mint Sauce This slightly spicy coriander & mint sauce is a riff on hari chutney, the traditional accompaniment to that colourful crunchy Indian street-side snack, chaat. My recipe is inspired by a sauce Ajoy Joshi serves at Nilgiri’s Indian Restaurant in Cremorne. I was tempted to call it a chutney, until I remembered […]
Prawns with Strange-flavoured Dressing The odd name of this classic Sichuan sauce (also used in bang bang chicken) comes about because the combination of flavours is a strange one that shouldn’t work, yet does. Strange or not, the prawns with strange-flavoured dressing are in a salty, sweet, nutty, tangy, spicy, numbing sauce that definitely tastes […]
Prawns with Bottarga Butter Prawns with bottarga butter is perfect for a quick and tasty dinner – even more so if you keep a roll of bottarga butter in the freezer! Use this recipe as inspiration for all sorts of flavoured butter to melt over seafood, meat, poultry or vegetables – or toss through freshly […]
North Carolina-style BBQ Sauce In the American South, barbecue sauce is as controversial a subject as the barbecue itself, perhaps even more so with regional variations being fiercely defended as the best, the original and the only sauce worth having. My North Carolina-style BBQ sauce is inspired by the mustard-based sauces of North Carolina. This […]
