Product Description

Here is a fresh approach for enhancing the flavor, attractiveness and healthfulness of even the most ordinary dish. This rich repertoire of recipes for nocook sauces and dressings was designed to release your creativity in the kitchen while keeping time and effort at bay. You'll learn the secrets for making either hot or cold nocook saucesfrom curried to Italianstyle, sweet or spicy, smooth or chunkyas well as a variety of dressings that will add zip to any simple meal of beans, pasta, rice, potatoes or veggies. Both novice cooks and experienced gourmets will find these recipes enjoyable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #491099 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

The Sauce Makes the Meal
I have a friend who swears that the sauce makes the meal. It used to be that the mere word "sauce" gave me pause, conjuring up images of corn starch, heavy, rich ingredients, and standing in front of a hot stove stirring. Erase those images from your mind and imagine a whole book of entirely vegan sauce and dressing recipes that you can make in a blender. That means no cooking and literally seconds to a better meal. A few recipes do call for toasted nuts or roasted garlic, but those can easily be done ahead of time, and believe me, that simple extra step is well worth it. The vast majority of recipes simply call for dumping everything into the blender and flipping the switch. With the help of this book I turned out a dinner of pasta with Walnut Pesto and green salad with Sweet Basil Vinaigrette in under 30 minutes. Even my omnivorous guests wholeheartedly approved. Included are sections on planning vegetarian meals and combining and correcting flavors. Recipe chapters are: Vinaigrette Sauces & Dressings; Nut & seed Based Sauces & Dressings; Tomato, Bean & Vegetable Based Sauces & Dressings; and Creamy Tofu Sauces & Dressings. A bonus with each recipe is a list of suggestions for each using each sauce; for example, you can use the Green Ecstasy Dressing on pasta with asparagus and carrots, on shredded daikon radish with Bibb lettuce or on sliced, ripe tomatoes. This cookbook is my current favorite!

Inspiring! You'll never go back to bottled dressings. :-)
I have several shelves full of vegan and vegan-friendly cookbooks. The Saucy Vegetarian is one of my favorites, not just for the delicious 100% vegan recipes, but for the creativity it inspires. The recipes generally involve processing about 6 to 8 no-cook (with occasional stove-top roasting) ingredients in the blender, and in some cases a food processor. Using this simple technique, I've made many awesome sauces and dressings, both Jo Stepaniak's recipes, and variations based on her recipes. A couple of ingredient substitutions I make that work well are 1 tablespoon chopped onion for each teaspoon powdered onion, and 1 teaspoon maple syrup for each teaspoon sugar. Unlike Jo's earlier works, some of these recipes call for sugar rather than a more natural, lower glycemic index sweetener. Fortunately, this isn't a problem as the maple syrup works fine, and there is a section listing recommended sweeteners and describing how they work in recipes.

My favorite recipes from the book include:
* Instant Alfredo Sauce - Very cheesy and smooth. And you would never know it contains only 13 calories per tablespoon and 0 grams of fat!
* Walnut Pesto Sauce - Delicious and very quick to make. No need to chop the walnuts first, just pile them high in the measuring cup. Works well with 1 to 2 teaspoons of Bragg Liquid Aminos (similar to soy sauce) in lieu of the salt and water.
* Carrot-Dill Sauce - I add a secret ingredient of celery seed and cut down on the water a bit for a thicker sauce. Delicious over rice and vegetables.
* Tahini, Tamari & Onion Dressing - I was afraid when I first made this raw onion dressing it would be overpowering, but the tahini and olive oil combine with the onion to make a mild oniony dressing that won't make your eyes tear. I always double this one and cut down on the water a bit to thicken it. I imagine that with mint or dill, it would make a great falafel sauce.
* Herb and Onion Vinaigrette - Makes a restaurant-quality house dressing. I double this one and substitute an equal quantity maple syrup for the sugar. Works great with balsamic vinegar in lieu of the wine vinegar.
* Sunflower Seed Dressing - This makes an interesting ranch-style salad dressing or dipping sauce. But it excels as a sandwich spread or pita bread filling with vegetables.

Of the dozen or so recipes I've tried in the book, there's only one I didn't like--the Miso Citrus Sauce. Tasted like salty orange juice.

Two helpful features with each recipe are the nutrient listing (calories, protein, fat, and carbohydrates) and the listing of foods in the margin to try the sauce on. But, this cookbook contains an amazingly helpful feature rarely found in cookbooks: In addition to merely giving you her recipes, Jo teaches you how to put together the six basic tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, pungent and astringent) to develop recipes of your own. She goes into a lot of detail about these tastes, which raw ingredients to use, styles of no-cook sauces and dressings, and even how to correct flavors if you don't like the concoction you invented. She also provides information on planning vegetarian menus, along with sample menus. Whether you're a novice or experienced vegetarian or vegan, it's worth reading the nearly 40-page educational section to get the creative juices flowing. Then follow Jo's advice to be innovative and consider her recipes as a starting point, altering as you see fit. That's what I do, and receive a lot of compliments in the kitchen. :-)

A 70 year old reader gets creative
This book certainly made my creative juices start flowing! I have never been comfortable with substitutions in the kitchen, and I found Stepaniak's description of viscosity, texture, taste and energetics,in addition to her listing thickening ingredients and how to adjust the flavors,really incredibly helpful. Her chart for improvising sauces and dressings has made me courageous and actually excited about exploring new options in the kitchen. This book is full of fresh ideas, and I've been a vegan for over 20 years, but never was completely happy without a recipe; I've always been reluctant to make things unless I had every ingredient listed. Now I have a greater insight into substitutions. I think experienced cooks will also profit from the description of the subleties of flavors. I highly recommend this book!