We prepare a lot of simple, repetitive dishes for budgetary reasons, to feed a multitude of kids with different likes/dislikes, & because both my partner & I experience digestive upset in some form or another (GERD, IBS IBSD, etc). It’s a steady diet of healthy whole foods, awesome in so many ways but yawn what a snooze-fest, lol.
Lately I’ve been looking for ways to spice up the foundation dishes of whole grains, veg, & protein & I found some really great saucy ideas.
This dude is one of my favourite utubers:
I made some quick pickles & what he calls “freshi sauce”, it’s all so, SO good. It doesn’t look like much but I could drink that parsley sauce, wow. I did add a few more things since mine was too watery, a bit of mustard, maple syrup, & mayo. & I subbed dill for the mint.
Do you have a flavour blaster recipe you want to share? I’ll try anything that isn’t too spicy, or can be made less spicy & still be good. My NYE resolution is going to be no more restaurant food unless it’s a really special occasion. Help a sister out!
Add olive oil to a small saucepan. A couple tablespoons, or at least enough to cover the bottom.
Crush 1-2 cloves of garlic in a garlic crusher and place in the pan.
Start heating, keeping a close watch on the garlic pieces. You want fragrant and golden, not burnt bits. The garlic will keep cooking in the oil after removing it from the heat so to be safe when it starts to smell like cooked garlic you can remove it from the heat.
Remove from heat and pour the oil and garlic into a heat safe bowl to cool it down.
After it has cooled, mix the garlic oil and garlic bits with greek yoghurt. Season to taste (salt and black pepper is nice).
The base recipe I use says 1 dl yoghurt, 0,5 tablespoon olive oil, 1 clove garlic, salt, black pepper. That’s for two servings. I tend to use a bit more olive oil to at least cover the bottom of my pan.
Great with roasted veggies! Sprinkle over some pomegranate seeds and chopped parsley for an extra pop of flavour to the veggies.
I love zhugg sauce and chimmichuri. I could eat both with a spoon.
I now have a sensitivity to garlic. So I go easy on the garlic and don’t eat them as often. Or use garlic infused oil instead of garlic.
And this salsa is made using canned tomatoes and is really good.
It makes a ton
I often will cook some sort of protein, some sort of grain, and some veggies. Store in the fridge and then for meals just make a bowl of what ever greens I have. Plus grains, veggie and protein. If I don’t have any protein cooked I’ll add an egg.
All these sauces look tasty, thanks! I like pomegranate a lot but as soon as one comes into the house my daughter eats the whole thing. Perhaps I could ask her to leave a small section for dinner, lol.
I have to minimize onion & garlic too but thankfully they are mostly only irritating when my system is already triggered. As long as I don’t pour fire on top of fire, I’m usually ok. I should pick up some hing spice to have on hand, it’s the same flavour without any indigestion discomfort. In fact, it’s used as a digestive! It’s latex related so not good for those with that allergy.
I’m meal planning for home & work lunches. I’m going to freeze some things to take to the office so there’s always something to eat & I won’t be tempted to go out!
Not much to add as historically I haven’t really done many sauces but I’m following along with this tread and taking notes! Eating more whole foods is high on my list of things to start doing more of and having sauces handy seems really helpful.
In general we cook with a lot of herbs and spices and are always going through cumin, thyme, rosemary, paprika, turmeric, coriander, oregano, basil, cayenne, fresh ground nutmeg, etc.
4 carrots (100 g total, so not gigantic carrots)
5-6 twigs of fresh tarragon (or use dry, but you’ll need less of it)
50 ml white wine vinegar
75 g room temperature butter
Peel and chop the carrots in thick slices. Boil in lightly salted water until soft.
Separate the leaves from the tarragon twigs. Place the twigs in a small saucepan with the vinegar. Simmer until the vinegar is reduced to half the original volume. Discard the twigs.
Blend the boiled carrots until smooth. Ilike to reserve a bit of the water in case I want to adjust the sauce later. Add the reduced vinegar, the tarragon leaves, and the butter (cut in smaller pieces). Blend until combined. Add more carrot water for a thinner sauce. Season to taste.
You could chop the tarragon leaves and stir them in last if you want control of how big chunks you get.
Juiced a bunch of ginger, then simmered the pulp, strained it & deeply steeped some chamomile flowers in that liquid. I then added that tea concentrate to the juice & stirred in a bottle of seabuckthorn infused honey. 2 cubes in a liter of water adds a touch of lovely flavour & heat. Yum!
So far I’ve made:
parsley freshi sauce, very tasty!
Quick pickles, delish!
Tomato chipotle sauce, omfg wow good
Cilantro sauce, again omfg wow good
Roasted beet dip, I LOVE IT!
Whitebean dip with parsley, super tasty!
Quick pickled red onion, those need to sit a day or so.
Next will be a roasted tomato, onion & garlic pasta sauce.
After that I’ll go searching for nigella seeds or black cumin to make Bengali Five Spice Blend or Panch Phoron which you can keep in a spice mill & add to anything.
I think most of the flavors we add to food are spicy, other than fish sauce which adds an umami flavor. I think when my husband cooks that he adds it to pretty much everything. I was going to suggest House of Tsang’s peanut sauce to add to chicken salad, but I’m not sure what your spice tolerance is.
i’m with you on the cumin. love it. i put it almost everything.
@magpie - with the onions and garlic, is it raw, cooked or both that you have issues with? if its just raw, then i would maybe recommend caramelized onions or fried garlic. so easy and tasty on top of pretty much everything…but if its a no go either way…then probably not so much.
