Technically, you could call every sauce a “salsa” since that’s it’s translation in Spanish, but that is not the case. This week was salsas, chutneys, relishes, and even a gastrique. Most of the recipes were very tasty, there were a few that left a bad taste in my mouth but learned a lot from them.
Salsa is a nice, fresh, simple sauce from latin origins to use up tomatoes and ingredients before they go bad. Tomatoes, onions, some cilantro compliment chips, assure your knife cuts are nice and uniform for a good looking salsa.
Chutneys were a very interesting flavor profile. A typically indian dish that is a simmered sauce to thicken it to almost a molasses consistency. Ours in particular was a mango chutney which was sweet, but the cloves and other spices made it a bit savory also.
Some very interesting cold sauces we made were the creole mustard sauce which I learned a little horseradish goes a long way. The aioli recipe however we made exactly as stated but the olive oil made it a very unpleasant off flavor. Then the dijonaisse was a wonderful mayo-like sauce but with much more flavor and a “tangy” bite to it.
Some reduced sauces we did like the blackberry gastrique went absolutely perfect with meat for a nice sweet touch on a savory dish. The cranberry sauce which was also a simmered sauce played quite nicely with the turkey.
I learned alot about cold sauces that taught me that condiments are a simple yet highly effective way to dress up what can normally be a bland protein dish.
