Sauce

Essentially prepared homemade horseradish and powerful stuff. If you want to make it in quantity, that’s fine, but wear goggles (seriously). Even with small amounts, keep your hands away from your eyes until you have washed them well.

You can make horseradish sauce by blending freshly grated (or even bottled) horseradish into many dairy products: Whipped cream or yogurt, for example. I like it best with sour cream, its flavor boosted with a little mustard and vinegar, though neither is essential.

Practically ubiquitous in Sweden and wonderful with cold vegetables, gravlax, cold meats, and sandwiches. You can leave it fairly thick and use it as a dip or thin it as much as you like to make it a little more saucy or even as thin as a salad dressing.

Probably the quickest salsa you can make and a fresh, delicious one for chips or simply cooked fish or chicken. Best with good fresh tomatoes, but still decent with canned (and definitely better with canned than with hard, unripe “fresh”).

If you can grill the tomatoes for this salsa—especially over wood—so much the better. But you can broil or even pan-grill them, and the salsa will still be good, as long as you make sure they blacken a bit. This makes a wonderful all-purpose condiment, and a great salsa for burritos and tacos; it’s also fabulous used in an omelet or scrambled eggs.

A standard and very useful salsa, great with anything grilled. I don’t make it fiery hot—it’s based on mild chiles—but you can add more of the hot ones if you like, and it’s easy enough.

The variously colored habanero (also called Scotch bonnet, for its shape) is blisteringly hot. It also has wonderful flavor, which, I suppose, is why people tolerate it. This salsa will turn up on any grilled meat, but it’s often served with Cochinita Pibil (page 351). Care is needed when handling all chiles, but especially habaneros; do not touch your eyes or other sensitive parts of your body after touching the chiles until you wash your hands very well (some people wear gloves to handle them, and that’s not a bad idea).

When dried—as you will usually find them—pasillas are often called chile negro, or black chile. They are thin, small, shriveled, and very dark. They are also earthy and not especially hot, so they yield a rich, densely flavored sauce traditionally used with lamb, beef, and chicken. If you want some heat, soak a dried chipotle or two with the pasillas. If you can find fresh tomatillos, use them in place of the tomatoes. Slip off the papery husks and add a little water to the sauce.

Pumpkin seeds figure heavily in much Mexican cooking. You can buy them toasted, but toasting them is an easy enough task, and they’re arguably better when toasted fresh—especially in lard or oil. (If you’d like to avoid the mess—or the lard—you can also toast the seeds on a baking sheet in a 350°F oven or in a dry skillet as you would sesame seeds, page 596.) Ancho chiles—dried poblanos—are mild and richly flavored. You can use them freely without worrying about overpowering heat. This sauce is best served over something simple, like grilled steak or chicken.

The best substitute for papaya here, believe it or not, is watermelon. Cantaloupe isn’t bad either. Serve this with any grilled meat, poultry, or fish.

This is a sharp, spiky sauce, but not a superhot one (it’s not a supergreen one, either!). Use it as a dip for chips or vegetables or as a basting sauce when roasting meat, fish, or vegetables.

A raw salsa, with nice strong flavors. Best with tomatillos, but still good with not-too-hard green tomatoes. I like to mix a little just-ripe red tomato in as well.

Somewhere between a vegetable dish and a salsa, this is great as a topping for simple grilled fish or chicken. If you have a gas grill, you can make this almost effortlessly; it’s easy, too, when you’ve started a charcoal fire for another purpose.

Killer on grilled meats, this simple herb puree is like pesto with more kick.

Chimichurri should be quite strong; you can cut back on the garlic and/or the red pepper, but it won’t be the same. Try it at least once at full strength; you’ll be surprised by how much the freshness of the parsley keeps everything in perspective, especially when served with meat, which it usually is.

Powerfully delicious, this sauce is served throughout the Caribbean, often with grilled chicken but also over vegetables. Best made with the juice of sour oranges, but you won’t find those here; I use a combination of orange and lime juices.

A classic Niçoise appetizer that is like fondue—a “warm bath”—of anchovies, garlic, and olive oil (you can use butter in place of some of the olive oil if you’re feeling indulgent), served with fresh raw vegetables. It’s an unusual dish by today’s standards but remains a wonderful combination. A fondue pot is the ideal serving vessel, because it’s important to keep the sauce hot at the table; an earthenware dish that retains heat well will work if you preheat it and serve the Bagna Cauda immediately.

This is special-occasion food for many Chinese, served as part of large meals. The eggs simmer in their special dark liquid, and eager hands reach in to retrieve an egg, peel it, and devour it. The smoky flavor and pretty patterns on the eggs are mysterious looking but easy to create. By all means, make these ahead of time, as you would any hard-cooked eggs.