Sauce

I know, I am a fool for even trying to take on a butter sauce for this book, but I would be remiss if I didn’t. In doing my research, many of you expressed your delight with this magical buttery emulsion, and I have to confess I am a fan as well. When I was a young chef, we used to have contests to see who could make the best hollandaise sauce. It’s actually a lot of fun to make because the chemical reaction that takes place makes it a bit challenging. This version is virtually impossible to mess up because when you remove most of the butter, you don’t have to worry about tricky emulsifications and the sauce “breaking” if the heat is too high. While it’s not the butter bomb that the original is, having only one-third of the original fat and calories is worth making some adjustments for.

This slightly spicy horseradish-tomato concoction makes a one-note boiled shrimp sing like a tenor. The typical ingredients are mostly healthy except for the sugar load—usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. This recipe calls for reduced-sugar ketchup and all the usual suspects, including prepared horseradish. Don’t mess with grating fresh horseradish—believe it or not, it’s not as strong as the jarred stuff.

There are many ways to flavor tartar sauce. I like cornichons, capers, onions, and Worcestershire sauce (it’s a great flavoring with little caloric significance). There are also many uses for tartar sauce—it’s not just for fried fish. Try it with grilled steak or shrimp, or as a spread on a sandwich.

This sauce is great on chicken wings, of course, but it’s also very tasty on steak, grilled fish, and barbecued shrimp—even on cooked greens like kale and collards. It’s an all-purpose sauce based on Buffalo wing sauce—with a twist. The most important twist may be that it has zero fat and only 33 calories per serving. Traditional Buffalo wing sauce is loaded with butter.

You can buy all-purpose Asian sauces at the grocery store, but most of them are loaded with sugar and fat. This one—with lots of ginger and garlic and just a little bit of oil—is very flavorful.

This aromatic puree is designed to be a base ingredient and is a great way to build flavor and texture without adding fat. It eliminates the need to add a lot of butter and cream to Macaroni and Cheese with a Crusty Crunch (page 174), for instance. You can stir it into just about any sauce or soup for a fat-free flavor punch.

Most gravies are made from meat juices and a thickener called “roux,” a 50/50 combination of pure fat—like lard or butter—and white flour. This flourless, butterless gravy can be used as a stand-alone sauce for almost any roast meat or poultry—and even some fish like cod and salmon. Play around with it: add low-fat bacon pieces, chopped olives, parsley, tarragon, basil, roasted pearl onions, diced cooked sweet potatoes, lemon zest, crushed peppercorns—whatever you can think of that fits into your caloric budget.

Barbecue may be America’s greatest contribution to the global culinary repertoire. We figured out how to take rich, fatty, often tough cuts of meat and smoke them into submission until they’re melt-in-your-mouth tender. Then we slather them with sugar-laden, high-fat sauce. Here’s a sugar-free, zero-fat BBQ sauce that packs flavor without pulling punches.

Typical pesto can be more than 50 percent pure fat, and even though a little goes a long way, that’s just too many calories. This is a re-invention of the classic pesto alla genovese. The garlic, pine nuts, basil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano are all still there, but low-fat sour cream stands in for the olive oil. It may not be 100 percent authentic, but you’ll love what it does for your dress size.

The key to making this basic meat sauce taste so great is to use beef shank—a very flavorful cut—and a splash of dry red wine. The long cooking time breaks the meat down until it is meltingly tender.

Toss this creamy sauce with hot cooked pasta, or drizzle it over steamed broccoli or roasted Brussels sprouts.

Real mayonnaise is made with egg yolks and oil—which might explain the 10 grams of fat per tablespoon. You can very easily wind up slathering at least a tablespoon or two on a sandwich. This very good approximation uses Greek yogurt as a base, rather than oil.

I have a very beautiful friend, Mariel Hemingway. She eats all organic foods, only fish, no meat, and she includes no carbs whatsoever in her diet. She makes a double dinner every night: one for her, one for the fam. However, when she makes this one really crazy blender sauce, it gets passed to everyone. (Mariel makes half of her food for each day in a blender.) The sauce is awesome with chicken, pork, meat, or fish. This is my version of her specialty. I call it Mariel’s Sauce for “Mish”—meat or fish.

I won’t count this one—it’s a dessert, not a meal—but it has three Boo favorites in one dish.

Serve all of these variations with tomato and onion salad or mixed greens and some good bread.

Classic hollandaise sauce cannot be chilled or reheated without losing the wonderful silky texture that it is known for. Here we’ve used Methocel at a ratio of 1 percent of the total weight of the other ingredients to make a hollandaise that can be made ahead of time while retaining its semifluid consistency. Even better, it has a spreadable texture when cold that makes it wonderful for sandwiches.

Applesauce is a classic example of a delicious and down-home recipe that sometimes suffers from syneresis, or separation of liquid from the gel. In this recipe, we use crabapples for a slight twist on the original. We like them for their tartness and color; they make a beautiful pink sauce. You’ll find that crabapple sauce will make a striking counterpoint for a variety of dishes, both sweet and savory. The little bit of xanthan gum added at a ratio of 0.1 percent of the total weight of the other ingredients makes it almost perfect.

Once you’ve tasted this puree we’re sure you will want to use it for more than just ice cream. It has a lightly sweet, deep caramel flavor. The leftover puree or the brown butter solids themselves can be incorporated into bread and cookie doughs, ravioli fillings, cake batter, frosting, vegetable purees—the list goes on and on. The reserved butter definitely won’t go to waste in your kitchen. It can be treated like ghee and used for sautéing proteins and vegetables or substituted for vegetable oil in cake batters with wonderful results.