Sauce

Small shrimp make a lovely addition to skillet sauces, because they cook so quickly, barely 2 minutes in the skillet. The trick is to make sure that you don’t overcook the shrimp. If you can, start your pasta before the sauce, so they finish at the same time. But if your pasta isn’t ready when the shrimp and sauce are, take the skillet off the heat.

The flavors of oranges and black olives are quite harmonious and make an unusual and interesting sauce.

Caponata is a dense condiment of chunky fried eggplant and other vegetables and seasonings, jam-packed with flavor—sweet, sour, and salty all at once. Sicilians make caponata in many variations and enjoy it in countless ways. Here’s a version I love. Use it as a condiment on grilled meats and steamed fish, as a sauce for pasta, or as topping for bruschetta.

This custard is a very tasty dessert and is often served with fruit, cookies, or pound cake. Although it is called a sauce, the natilla takes center stage rather than the other way around. Many convents serve it in a large bowl and dust freshly ground canela over a stencil to create a religious symbol or figure on top. I particularly like it with fruit such as mango, guava, or berries.

Cajeta is another name for fruit pastes, or ates, and is a term still used in certain states, but the most familiar form of cajeta is the sweet caramel made from goat’s or cow’s milk and cooked down with sugar in copper pots. The goat’s milk has a distinctive grassy, musky flavor and is the most commonly used for this application. The name derives from the wooden boxes called cajetes made from tejamanil or ocote (pine). Adding a little corn syrup helps with the sticky consistency, but it can be left out if you prefer to make it the old-fashioned way. This luscious sauce is wonderful to top (warm) or swirl into ice cream, to accompany pancakes, or, better yet, to eat by the spoonful!

The great thing about this glaze is that it can be used for any grilled meat. You can brush it onto pork chops, chicken, ribs—anything you feel like grilling on game day!

This “secret sauce” can be made a day ahead—in fact, we recommend that you do that, to help those flavors marry well together. (It’s called “Comeback Sauce” because they keep comin’ back for more!)

This kicky sauce is matched in flavor by its dramatic green color. Bright with parsley and with deep notes from the anchovy, salsa verde makes plain grilled fish or meat into something you want to serve to company, and it adds an herby note to rich organ meats or tongue. Try adding a spoonful to soups or tossing with plain boiled potatoes.

If you master any one recipe in this book, this should be it. Not only does a bright, fresh tomato sauce turn any freshly made pasta into an event, but it’s also an indispensable component in dishes from basic ragus to Maloreddus with Squid, Tomato Sauce, and Lemon (page 97) and Linguine with Shrimp (page 90). Part of the fun of making your own sauce is squishing the whole tomatoes—and they must be San Marzanos—with your fingers. It can get messy, especially for those of us who wear glasses, but it’s worth it (and a good stress-reduction technique, to boot). Find an apron and get ready for a simple, well-balanced sauce that you’ll always want to have on hand. And when you can have this sauce ready in under an hour, why ever open a jar again?