🧚‍♀️Stick a sauce on it

Your week will taste better

Apr 04, 2023

The secret sauce of life is just really good sauce.

That’s how I ended my talk at Omnivore Books last month.

I was responding to the question “How do you make leftovers more appealing?”

Successful leftover remixing starts with openness to a fresh start for every young leftover. Consider the base, vegetable, and protein framework to remix cooked rice or potatoes (base 🍚), roasted vegetables and salad greens (vegetable 🥦), and the pre-cooked (insert protein of choice 🫘) to create a salad, grain bowl, or wrap.

Great, now you have a meal that is very boring.

Here’s the fix: slather that colorless leftover concoction in a sauce and you have something swoon-worthy.

In even better news, one of my favorite sauce recipes is below. There are a few more steps than my usual “combine in a lidded jar and shake” sauce recipes, but this one is worth it.

Creamy Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Inspired by the ever-vivacious Middle Eastern Muhammara sauce, this creamy smokey sauce is one of my favorites. Red peppers, once roasted, become creamy in a casually cool smokey sort of way. I caved and settled with regular molasses instead of the traditional pomegranate molasses. Nothing was lost, besides potential frustration in the grocery store line. Choose your own adventure when it comes to adding water. Use less water for a thicker dip-type thing, and add more water for something a little more drizzly.