I was given an ARC by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This is my first time reviewing a cookbook. It’s an excellent book with clear instructions on how to freeze your sauces and how to unfreeze them once you want to use them. The recipes are well written and easy to follow even for amateurs like myself. There also recipes to go with your sauce such as pasta or rice and tofu. Most sauces are also vegetarian friendly which is really awesome. The first chapter features sauces from across the Americas such as a delicious creamy Chipotle and a Creole red gravy.
I tried several recipes starting with the Chimichurri which is one of my favorite sauces it goes well with several meats but also with Italian food, it originates from Argentina and there are many variations but the recipe in this book has quickly become my favorite. The recipe is super easy it doesn’t require too much work and your kitchen won’t be too messy. All you need is a good knife, a cutting board, a bowl and freezer bags. I followed the recipe but replaced the jalapeños with chiles and added a pinch of cumin. Even after a few weeks in the freezer the taste was still great. Due to the chiles my sauce looks a tad bit different from the one in the book. Since I had quite a lot of sacue I put some in jars and gave them to friends and neighbours who enjoyed them just as much as I did.
The next sauce I made was the Sambal from the Asian inspired chapter. Sambal is one of those sauces you’ll always find in Indonesian households. I usually only make sambal using my grandma’s recipe which has anchovies in it. The version in this book is a more mainstream sambal and a lot less spicy than my grandma’s which is a good thing because not everyone enjoys crying while eating. Again the recipe is so easy to follow you won’t mess it up. I used this sambal to make sajoer beans a traditional side dish in my kitchen whenever we eat beef rendang. Sadly at the time I didn’t have a camera so no pictures.
The next sauce I made was the mango salsa. I ended up with a bit more than the recipe suggests much to the delight of my neighbours and friends. The challenge was to find the perfect mangos and peaches I live in a very small town and exotic fruits are hard to come by. This sauce required a bit more work than the previous sauces and my blender wasn’t quite up to the task but it still came out really well. I served the salsa with minced meat tortilla’s and it was a huge succes! Even after a month in the freezer it was still to die for! My apologies for the quality of the pictures it’s fairly difficult to make good pictures of food. This sauce also goes great with manchego cheese which is a spanish cheese made of sheep milk
The next picture features some awful plating skills from a friend of mine who I use frequently as a test subject, he decided to put both the salsa and Chimichurri on the same plate…. He used the salsa for tortillas and the Chimichurri for a nice steak
All in all this is a great cookbook for amateurs but also for the more advanced cook with too little time on their hands. The author really understands all the different cuisines and did an awesome job presentation wise. Often with cookbooks there are pages for just 1 recipe and some are so complicated or time-consuming that it takes the joy out of cooking altogether. I’ll be buying this book as soon as it comes out!
I’ll be making more sauces and will post pictures of my creations as soon as possible
Dark Mondays 
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