Issue Six: Sauce

The Bite: Diners

Cover Art by Mariah Cameron Scee

Mariah Cameron Scee is a painter and designer in Santa Fe. She has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and pursues her own artwork alongside a full-time role as the director of art and branding for Second Street Brewery.

editor’s note

S​​auce, wrote George Herman Ellwanger in his 1902 account of gastronomic history, is the sonnet of the table. And for many of the dishes in these pages, this still rings true—whether with French sauces or moles or curries, sauces that result from an orchestra of precision.

But some sauces taste more like a haiku, simple yet obscure. Others are an ode to a single color, a sole ingredient. And a skilled sauce cook—“the enlightened chemist, the creative genius and the cornerstone of the edifice of superlative cookery,” in the words of the Marquis de Cussy—can render a sauce akin to free verse.

This issue is a lesson in relish, a bite-sized tour; a discovery, a drizzle of something tangy, a plate of rice bathed in spicy vindaloo.

It is also an argument, a misunderstanding, a theft and a conquest, a gift, an accident, a love story. The cool of beautifully seasoned crema on the lip of the plate.

“In other words,” wrote M. F. K. Fisher when musing on how the chicken ought to be dressed for the perfect dinner party, “the usual should be made unusual; extraordinariness should cloak the ordinary.”

It’s all about the sauce.

Going Green

Aria Chiodo explores local takes on the tomatillo.

Curry Quest

Ungelbah Dávila-Shivers digs into the story (and flavors) of Indian curry.

The Sauce Boss

Maria Manuela visits with Chef Steve Riley of Mesa Provisions.

Anatomy of a Sauce

Candolin Cook meets with Chef Alain Jorand of Le Pommier Bistro to demystify French sauces.

To Taste

A tour of table sauces by Jason Conde.

Going Green

Aria Chiodo explores local takes on the tomatillo.

Curry Quest

Ungelbah Dávila-Shivers digs into the story (and flavors) of Indian curry.

The Sauce Boss

Maria Manuela visits with Chef Steve Riley of Mesa Provisions.

Anatomy of a Sauce

Candolin Cook meets with Chef Alain Jorand of Le Pommier Bistro to demystify French sauces.

To Taste

A tour of table sauces by Jason Conde.

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