Cookbook Reviews - The Saucy Vegetarian

Saucy Vegetarian: Quick and Healthy, No-Cook Sauces and Dressing

The Saucy Vegetarian
Publisher: The Book Publishing Company
© 2000 by Jo Stepaniak
ISBN: 1570670919

Try out a Sample Recipe: Salsa Fresca

From the Author

Jo Stepaniak:

I’ve been cooking and developing recipes ever since I became a vegetarian as a young girl in the sixties. At that time, vegetarian cookbooks and natural food stores were virtually nonexistent, so I was on my own to figure out what and how to eat. I’ve been buzzing around kitchens ever since, doing a brief stint as a chef in a natural foods restaurant in the seventies, honing my recipes in the eighties (when my husband and I became vegan), and pioneering vegan cheese and meat alternatives in my cookbooks since the nineties. The Uncheese Cookbook was a breakthrough for conquering what often is considered "the final frontier" in becoming vegan — parting with cheese. (More...)

Nice Extras:

List of helpful equipment.
Information on planning vegetarian meals with sample menus and presentation tips.
Information on the six different tastes foods have, including a taste chart with vegetables, fruit and herbs, spices & seasonings.
Detailed information on the role of fats and oils in sauces and dressings.
How to store oils and nut or seed butters.
How to reduce fat and oil in sauces and dressings.
List of recommended oils, nut and seed butters.
Information on the role vinegars and acidulants play in sauces and dressings, including a list of recommendations.
Information on salt seasonings, including list of recommendations.
Information on the role herbs and spices play in sauces and dressings.
Information on sweeteners, including a list of recommendations.
Very detailed information on how to develop you own sauce or dressing recipes.
Additional recipes for roasting garlic and red peppers, making ginger juice etc.

Reviewer: Moira from New Zealand:

The Saucy Vegetarian is a book of no-cook sauce recipes, but it is more than that. The lengthy introduction includes an outline for planning vegetarian meals using different food components, sample menus and ideas for presentation, taste theory & knowing how to combine tastes, the roles of fats & oils, vinegars & acidulants, salt seasonings, herbs & spices and sweeteners in food, tips for developing your own recipes, and various charts and worksheets to simplify things for the process-minded.

The sauce recipes are split into Vinaigrette Sauces & Dressings, Nut & Seed Based Sauces & Dressings, Tomato, Bean & Vegetable Based Sauces & Dressings and Creamy Tofu Sauces and Dressings, with a few tips at the end for special things you might want to add to your sauces like roasted garlic, ginger juice and tamari-roasted seeds. Each sauce recipe has a few suggestions of ways to use it. So far I've only tried one recipe in this book, Warm Peanut Miso Sauce, and it was really tasty.