cover image 100 Simple Sauces for Today's Healthy Home Cooking: Easy-To-Prepare Salsas, Relishes, Chutneys, Marinades, and Much More

100 Simple Sauces for Today's Healthy Home Cooking: Easy-To-Prepare Salsas, Relishes, Chutneys, Marinades, and Much More

Carl Jerome. Owl Books (NY), $12.95 (128pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-4799-8

This collection of simple and quick sauces based mostly on fresh ingredients takes a smart idea and executes it brilliantly. Not only are the sauces themselves (e.g., Wasabi Mustard Sauce, Chickpea and Sherry Vinegar Dressing, Virgin Bloody Mary Sauce) tempting and inventive, but they are organized in an intelligent, user-friendly manner. The recipes are presented in chapters by type of sauce, such as Tomato Sauces or Yogurt and Sour Cream Sauces. A detailed index further groups them by the foods they complement well. Jerome (Cooking for a New Earth) has a thorough and wide-ranging definition of the term sauce, which means that he includes a chapter on marinades that can be used as sauces, like a Korean Marinade and Dipping Sauce with ginger and brown sugar, and another on dessert sauces such as Fresh Pineapple Orange Spice Sauce, any of which would turn plain vanilla ice cream into a special dessert. It is the rare recipe in this book that has more than three steps to it, but the resulting additional flavor belies the small amount of effort required. This is an outstanding addition to any home cook's bookshelf. (June)