Home made dressings and sauces.

[Thunderduck]

Does anyone have a good recipe, or two, for dressings and sauces,particuarly pasta sauces?

I'd appreciate any ideas or recipes.

What sort of pasta sauces are you after Thunderduck - completely made from scratch ones or ones that cheat a little and use tins/jars?

Well sauces using tinned tomatoes are fine, preferable actually.

Best easy pasta sauce = melted boursin. Good with gently fried onions, garlic and mushrooms stirred in.

Another easy peasy one is to roast a load of vege then stir it into pasta and pesto.

Our favourite one is very easy - chop some shallots, an onion and a green pepper then fry. Add in some chopped ham, and after a couple of minutes add a tin of toms, a small tin of tomato puree and a small jar of pesto. Add pasta and bob's your uncle! Is delicious, and is a failsafe sauce in this house.

Here's another one - cut some chorizo into strips and fry. After a couple of minutes bung in an onion and peppers (any colour but I find red or green works best), then add courgettes and mushrooms. When cooked add tin of toms, bit of puree and some goats cheese or philadelphia (or boursin!)

I improvise quite a lot, and just put in what I have but another nice one is chicken, mushrooms and white wine. Just cook some onion, then add mushrooms, then a bit of stock and plenty of white wine. Reduce then add cream. Cook chicken beforehand if from raw, but if already cooked then add in halfway through.

Hope that helps, and that they're not too boring - I don't seem to have much imagination in my cooking anymore!

Thankyou both. They sound lovely, and not boring at all.

Well there's the standard tomato sauce for pasta but I'm assuming you're after something a little more interesting than that?

I like pasta with a suace of sauteed onions sliced thinly in half moons, with garlic, cooked until really really soft and caremalised with a teaspoon of sugar, then a tbsp of flour added and some chicken stock to thicken it. It is quite similar to an onion gravy I suppose but thinner and tastier, and goes really well with tagliatelle.

Goulash is also lovely served with pasta.

Italian chicken: chicken cooked in a tomato sauce with peppers and olives and basil.

Tomato, anchovy, olive and caper sauce for pasta is also really nice provided you like those flavours.

salad dressing is 3 parts olive oil, one part balsamic vinegar, plus mustard/garlic/herbs/whatever.

I make my salad dressing with:

half a teaspoon of grainy mustard
half a teaspoon of honey
balsamic vinegar
olive oil
mucho black pepper
sea salt
lemon juice if I've got it

It comes out all thick and dark and oozey and dd1 could eat buckets of it!