About this item
The definitive cookbook on contemporary sauces that highlights fresh flavors and updated classics.Finally, a cookbook on sauces that is fresh, vibrant, and alive. In Mastering Sauces, Susan Volland veers away from traditional lesson plans and presents sauce-making in a whole new way. She focuses on how great cooks all over the world make sauces with impromptu lan -- they splash and drizzle, slather and douse. Great sauces are made by following three fundamental principles: Maximize Flavor, Manipulate Texture, and Season Confidently. Armed with these principles, you can make any sauce your way.In addition to over 150 recipes that reflect today's tastes for seasonal produce, international ingredients, and alternative dietary choices, there are dozens of tips and tables suggesting ways to adapt and customize sauces. There are innovative Meatless Reductions, international Sauces That Start with a Can of Diced Tomatoes, and an Endlessly Adaptable Stir-Fry Sauce. Don't have time to make stock Brew a quick "Mock Stock" or savory infusion. Not eating meat Avoiding wheat Check out the chapter called Respect Your Mother, where, alongside the classics, there are tantalizing recipes for Vegan Corn "Hollandaise" (pictured on the cover) , Soy Cream Sauce, and Eggless Mayo.In a conversational and very readable style, Volland teaches the "whys" and "hows" of sauce-making so cooks can better understand their ingredients to create the dish they want. And because she knows that even the best cooks have off-nights, she finishes with a list of Remedies for Faltering Sauces.Mastering Sauces is the go-to resource for all cooks, all tastes, and all diets. 16 pages of color photographs
About the Author
I call myself a culinary communicator. Basically, I get paid to make people hungry instead of full. My job is to transform concepts and ideas into inspiring text, recipes, products, and images. For twenty years I've been perfectly happy working in "the back of the house" picking up freelance gigs; writing, developing recipes, testing, editing, and collaborating on books and promotional projects. Then I got this great idea for a solo cookbook.
Mastering Sauces is the culmination of decades of learning, experimenting, and developing my own tastes and preferences. The concept came to me after working on Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine books. I spent a few years immersed in science and innovation, learning from amazingly talented and intelligent people who never hesitated to break established rules. Amidst all of this, I kept veering back to my core values and my belief that food doesn't have to be fancy to be good, and that home cooking tends to be the best food in the world. While in that mindset I had a sip of an extraordinary but essentially simple vegetarian jus and Mastering Sauces was born.
Sauce making can be intimidating. The term conjures images of classical preparations and fancy restaurants. But ketchup, curry, salsa, and salad dressings are also sauces.When home cooks want to understand more about sauce making they are inevitably pointed towards the French Mother Sauces. But here's the thing - there are a whole lot of great sauces outside of France. When you set aside Escoffier's lesson plans, you eliminate your reliance on veal stock, roux, and butter. You begin to see how all great sauces are made by following three core principles: Maximize Flavor, Manipulate Texture, and Season Confidently. It was time to take the formality out of sauces and nudge them into the 21st century.
My book is scientific yet very personal. Specific but still spontaneous. Contemporary, but respectful of the classics. The goal is to get people to cook and feel good about what they make - no matter what it is.
