A Condimentary Tale

We pour it enthusiastically on our burgers,and French fries seem incomplete without little dabs of it. However,ketchup is merely one type of sauce,and the most easily available one. But what are sauces? Sauces are the semi-solid or liquid food used to prepare dishes,or as an add-on to the dishes themselves. Chinese and Japanese cuisines are incomprehensible without soy sauce,as is Italian cuisine without its indispensible red sauces,like the siciliana or pizzaiola. Even Indian cuisines have their own sauce – chutneys too all under this category.

Many cooks prefer to make their own sauces,feeling that the ones available in the market are not good enough for their dishes. “Sauces are very important for grilled items like fish,chicken and tender lamb,” says Sanjib Das,chef,Tertullia,Koregaon Park. We make barbeque sauce in our kitchen with a tomato base mixed with tomato puree,mustard paste and a bit of coffee powder for a slight bitterness. Topina sauce is made with olive oil,fresh olives,and pine nuts ground into a creamy paste. Pesto sauce is the Italian favourite sauce,used as the base for most pasta preparations,with pine nut,parmesan cheese,olive oil and basil leaves,” he says. Akshay Gund,senior captain at Sicilia,Dhole Patil Road,agrees,saying,“Our chef makes special sauces that one cannot get over the counter. Many of these sauces are very dish-specific,like mushroom sauce for scallapino di polla,lemon sauce for steamed fish,green peppercorn sauce and onion and thyme sauce for steak,and so on.”

However,many chefs cook elaborate dishes,for which they get the basic sauces from the market and embellish them,as per requirement. “In India we observed that people have started experimenting with Italian food at home. The base of most of the Italian food dishes are different types of sauces,which are rather tedious to make at home so we launched a range of Italian sauces to make cooking easy and hassle free,” says Oliver Mirza,managing director,Fun Foods. And the customers agree. “I make some mayonnaise and chilli sauce with boiled pasta for a quick snack. However,making the white sauce from scratch is a tedious effort. Sauces available in the market save a lot of time,especially if you are too hungry to cook something,” says Preeti Warrier,management trainee.

And chefs are not privy from using these sauces either. “We make tomato concus and basic white sauce in our kitchen and innovate with them as per the requirement of different Italian dishes. However,there is not much availability of ingredients to make some of the sauces required for Mexican and Thai food.” says Babulal Biswas,executive chef at Copacabana,Baner. “We use bottled sauces like red chili sauce,green chili sauce,tabasco sauce,tomato ketchup and puree to prepare Mexican dishes and Thai chilli sauce that has honey and chilli flakes,a watery fish sauce that brings a fishy flavour,hoisin sauce which is slightly sweet,oyster mushroom ketchup and oyster sauce for Thai dishes,” he adds.