Condiment

Almost any combination of dried fruits can be refreshed this way and turned into a dessert to be served alongside a slice of cake, or with a little crème fraîche. Fresh winter citrus fruits also make beautiful winter compotes when soaked in syrup flavored with their zest.

If you’ve never had homemade sauerkraut before, it will be a revelation. And it is easy to make at home: the longer it ferments, the softer the texture and the more intense the flavor. The rule-of-thumb ratio is 1 1/2 teaspoons salt per pound of cabbage.

Homemade hummus is very easy to make. If you don’t have any tahini (a paste made from sesame seeds), a chickpea purée without it is still quite delicious. Just add more olive oil.

Freshly rendered lard is the traditional fat for refried beans. Look for it at Latin American markets.

Crème fraîche is heavy cream that has been cultured and thickened with a live enzyme like the one found in buttermilk. It is thick and smooth with a rich tangy flavor. Th e advantage of cooking with crème fraîche (as opposed to sour cream) is that it will not separate when boiled. Crème fraîche is easy to make and is amazingly versatile. Stir it into a vinaigrette for a creamy, tangy dressing. Flavor it with herbs and a touch of salt for a perfect garnish for a soup. Use it to thicken and enrich a pasta sauce or braise. A potato gratin is sublime when made with crème fraîche. For dessert it can be sweetened with sugar, honey, or maple syrup to make a simple sauce. It can be whipped to make a soft whipped cream (be sure not to overwhip it; it will become grainy, just like heavy cream). Mix with melted chocolate for a great frosting (page 386). And it makes delicious ice cream.

This North African condiment is made from puréed sweet peppers and chiles. Use it to spice up a soup, roast meat, or grilled vegetables; as a sandwich spread; or as a sauce with rice or couscous dishes.

This sauce is a version of a raita, the cooling South Asian yogurt sauce, which is often seasoned with cumin seed, cinnamon, and cayenne. Try different varieties of cucumber such as lemon, Armenian, or Japanese. If the cucumbers have large seeds, use a spoon to scrape them out after you cut the cucumbers in half. A cool growing season sometimes yields bitter cucumbers, so taste each cucumber; a bitter cucumber will spoil the sauce.

This is a variation of a North African condiment. It is redolent of coriander and complements saffron rice with vegetables or fish.

This salsa is so easy to make and tastes so much better than anything you can buy in a jar! Use fresh ripe tomatoes in the summer and canned whole tomatoes the rest of the year.

This bright-tasting sauce is a great accompaniment to grilled foods of all descriptions—steak, chicken, shrimp, or vegetables—and it is also wonderful as a dip for tortilla chips or as a sauce for tamales.

Gremolata is a mixture of chopped parsley, garlic, and lemon zest. Persillade (pronounced “per-see-odd”) is simply chopped parsley and garlic. Although these are not technically sauces, I use them as a fresh bright finish to sprinkle over roasted or braised meats, pastas, and anything grilled.

This salsa is a fresh complement to grilled or baked fish or fish tacos.

Bagna cauda means “warm bath” in an Italian dialect. Don’t let the anchovies steer you away. The strong flavors of garlic and anchovy are suspended in perfect balance in warm butter and olive oil. It is a delightful dipping sauce for raw vegetables, and it makes a tasty sauce for grilled vegetables and grilled or baked fish.

There are many varieties of avocados, and all may be used, but the Hass avocado is the ideal choice. The flesh has a rich, nutty, and herby taste. It is a good keeper, it peels easily, and the pit is easily removed. An avocado is ripe when it yields to the gentle pressure of your thumb.

Salsa verde, the classic green sauce of Italy, is a sauce of olive oil and chopped parsley flavored with lemon zest, garlic, and capers. It adds lively freshness to almost any simple dish. Flat-leaved Italian parsley is preferable, but curly parsley is good, too. Fresh parsley—the fresher the better—is the majority herb, but almost any other fresh, tender herb can enhance a salsa verde: tarragon, chervil, and chives are good choices. Use a sharp knife when you chop parsley (and other herbs). A sharp knife slices cleanly through the leaves, preserving both flavor and color, while a dull knife mashes and bruises them. The zest is the thin yellow outer layer of the lemon’s skin; avoid grating any of the bitter white part (called the pith) beneath. The zest brightens the flavor of the sauce, so don’t be shy with it; you may need more than one lemon’s worth. Don’t hesitate to experiment. I make salsa verde more or less thick depending on what I am using it for. I tend to use less oil when it’s for roasted meats and grilled vegetables and more for fish.

Velvety, luscious, garlicky mayonnaise—what the French call aïoli (pronounced eye-oh-lee)—is another sauce I use all the time: on sandwiches; with vegetables, both raw and cooked; with meat and fish; as the binder for chicken salad and egg salad; and as a base for sauces such as tartar sauce. Most children, even very young ones, love aïoli and will happily use it as a dip for bite after bite of bread, carrots, potatoes, and even vegetables they might otherwise refuse. Two or three small cloves of garlic per egg yolk, pounded with a mortar and pestle, make a fairly pungent garlic mayonnaise—depending on the garlic. The strength of garlic’s flavor can vary a lot, depending on freshness, season, and variety. I always pound the garlic in a mortar and pestle and reserve half of it, so I can add it later if the aïoli needs it. (You can always add more garlic, but you can’t subtract it.) It’s important to pound the garlic to a very smooth purée so the sauce will be garlicky through and through, not just a mayonnaise with bits of garlic in it. One egg yolk will absorb up to one cup of oil, but you can add less if you don’t need that much mayonnaise. Whisk the oil in drop by drop at first, adding more as you go. It is much easier to whisk when the bowl is steadied. To help hold it still, set it on top of a coiled dish towel. Adding a small amount of water to the egg yolk before you incorporate the oil helps prevent the sauce from separating or “breaking.” If mayonnaise does separate, stop adding oil, but don’t despair. Just crack a fresh egg, separate the yolk into a new bowl, add a little water as before, and slowly whisk in first the broken sauce and then the rest of the oil. Make aïoli half an hour ahead of time, to give the flavors a chance to marry. As with anything made with raw eggs, if you’re not going to serve mayonnaise within an hour, refrigerate it. Aïoli tastes best the day it’s made.

In Mexico, pickled onions are to taco stands what pickle relish is to a hot dog cart in the U.S.—a condiment that taco-lovers can’t do without. Make it at home and save yourself the trip across the border.

I am obsessed with mayo, especially homemade mayo. All it takes is a little patience, and the end result is much brighter and smoother than any store-bought variety. It’s traditionally made by hand, by vigorously beating with a whisk, but I make it in a food processor, which is much easier. I always have a batch of this chipotle mayo in the fridge; you can easily omit the chipotles for a mayo base to which you could add any sort of flavorings. Raw eggs are used in this recipe, so it’s best to not serve this to pregnant women, children, or anyone with a compromised immune system. If you use pasteurized egg yolks, however, you can serve it to whomever you like.

In Mexico pico de gallo is used to describe a wide variety of regional salsas, which are always made with cubed fresh fruit and/ or vegetables. Pico de gallo is also known as salsa picada, which means minced or chopped sauce. The most common version is made with red tomatoes, onion, and green chiles and is sometimes called salsa mexicana or salsa bandera, because the colors in the salsa represent those of the Mexican flag. I like to make mine with yellow tomatoes when I am in the mood for a sweeter salsa. Feel free to use red tomatoes if you want to keep it traditional.