I want sauce with everything I eat.

From burritos to apples, all food is better with a sauce.

The sauce for cereal is whatever kind of milk and the sauce for salad is whatever kind of dressing.  The sauce for bagels is butter and or cream cheese etc.  The sauce for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the jelly and so is the peanut butter.  It’s a sauce sandwich, stupid.

And how lovely is your very own formula of the wasabi and the soy when you’re dunking the albacore and the salmon?

Fuckin’ ponzu sauce rocks because scallions and sesame oil.

Sauce is one of life’s most obvious secrets.  The lubricant of existence.  Alchemy.  Sauce is proof of evolution and the superiority of our species. There are a plethora of synonyms for the concept of sauce, like condiment, side, gravy, baste, brine, juice, glaze, drippings, Miracle Whip……… realistically anything liquid that is orally consumable meant to accompany anything solid that is orally consumable is sauce and it’s an achievement right up there with our ability to split the atom and explore other planets.

Hardly as intrinsically rewarding though.

Here’s more proof.  Considerable science and technology has been brought to bear to preserve sauces and condiments indefinitely in little pillows or packets of foil and plastic.  I have a small drawer full just in case I need some kind of sauce in an emergency or as some kind of powerful afterthought.  I never worry about using them. Flavorful and safe until after the apocalypse.  An entire door of my refrigerator devoted to nothing but liquid flavor in various jars.

Cheese is an awesome food because of the relative ease in transforming it into a sauce.  Cheese sauce is among humankind’s highest achievements.  Proof of our right to dominion.  Animals have no concept of sauce.  Butter is awesome for the same reason. Combine butter and cheese and you have Alfredo or, a relatively cold fusion the way I see it.

I’ve lapsed to such profound and despicable indulgence that I have, on occasion, experienced the glee and shame of rubbing a deliciously tangy Hollandaise in my hair. I believed it had properties beyond my imagination based purely on the fact that it tasted divine. There’s nothing quite as simultaneously disturbing and invigorating as staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror, your own head festooned with the gore of a uniquely delicious sauce intended for a perfectly poached chicken egg.

I admit, booze is the sauce for joy and despair.

Okay so,  liquids, what about gases?

Wood smoke is a gas and it’s a goddamn bona fide sauce.

I’ll think of another example in a minute.

I argue that seasonings like salt and pepper for example, are sauce.  Oregano, dill, cayenne, coriander, lemon zest, cinnamon………see?

Solids.

So there we have it.

All three states of matter.

Just the other day I made a sauce that raised high the roof beams.  I started off with a deep sorta sauce pan with way too much really good olive oil on medium heat.  Half a garlic bulb, a whole large red onion and a whole shallot, all chopped coarse.  Added the onions first, the shallots second and the garlic last.  Cooked it until the onion is translucent  and before anything gets brown at all.  Add a couple generous glugs of a decent dry white and turn the burner way up so it can boil off for just a minute or so.

Then came the aggregate of my prep.  Eight medium vine ripened tomatoes, diced.  About a pint total of a couple varieties of chopped green, black and Kalamata olives along with big chunks of slippery roasted garlic.  Bold amounts of colorful ground peppercorns, lemon pepper and oregano in powder form.  The juice and zest of one whole lemon.

It was just like the Food Network I swear.

Then I exercised patience.

It needed to cook down for a spell.

An hour here and there with me tasting and doctoring.

A little smoked  sea salt once in a while as it reduced.

Got the farfalla boiling (24 oz.) and began grating and adding handfulls of parmesan, asiago and this hard, aged jack I found to the saucepan.  When executed correctly, the oily, chunky textured concoction behaves like a friendly emulsifier and it all evolves into a gooey, pizza flavored amalgam in no time.

Dumped the pasta in a mesh strainer and poured about half the sauce in the bottom of the giant pasta pot.  Poured the butterfly in and it clicked and smacked while it tumbled and then dumped the rest of the sauce on top and stirred it like a bastard with a giant black plastic spoon.

The sound was like a churning of wax teeth but the aroma was fabulous.

I left the three cheeses out with the grater.

Awesome sauce.

Drinks for my friends.

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