Sauces For The Holidays

 Sauces add to any dish , savory or sweet. The holidays are a great time to experiment with them as they add to all sorts of dishes. They can be full of spiced or spiced with different liqueurs. 

Savory dishes can definitely benefit from a good sauce. The Piedmontese of Northwestern Italy have a sauce redolent with mustard and surprisingly dried fruit. Frutta mostarda is perfect with bollito misto  boiled beef which cries out for this sauce. It's very easy to make, as you cook honey mustard, sugar, and red wine together with a variety of dried and fresh fruits. These are usually dried apples,cherries, apricots and figs mixed together with a freshly cut pear.  It a  good strong yellow mustard and mustard seeds give it the zing to cut through  that sweetness. Most Piedmontese usually have it over boiled beef (this cuts of beef boiled in beef stock for more flavor) but you could have it over air fried portabello mushrooms since the fungi of have a beefy flavor.Another savory sauce, perfect for chicken and turkey is sauce veloute, preferably one made with chicken stock (although it can be made with either beef or fish stock , the elastic is good for lobster or shrimp dishes). The base is a simple roux, which is butter and flour whisked together. The broth is then added to this and whisked into a creamy sauce. Just remember to not brown the flour while first cooking it otherwise the whole sauce will have a pasty flavor.

Sweets are great to make this time of year. They can be poured warm or hot over ice cream or certain plain cakes like Bundt or pound. Of course the most desirable is the hot fudge which can turn any plain dessert into a decadent one. A good recipe calls for good quality chocolate such as Ghiradelli sixty per cent cacao baking chips, granulated white sugar, light corn syrup for a smooth, silk, texture along with heavy cream, butter and vanilla extract  to give the sauce that richness and glossiness.Combine everything in a sauce pan save for the butter and vanilla, let it bol for a few minutes. Add the butter and vanilla, Stir and take off stove. It's excellent on ice cream but even better pooling around a plain , frostingless slice of  chocolate or vanilla cake.If you want something a bit less intense but still packed with flavor then thick of a fruit sauce laced with brandy or rum. Keep in mind some like apricot or cherry can also be used as a sauce for such meats as ham or chicken. One that would go well with desserts is a sauce made with apricot preserves, peach brandy , butter , preferably a top quality one like Kerry Gold, heavy cream and brown sugar.The brown sugar and butter are melted first in a saucepan and cooked for two minutes. everything else is then added and stirred together. This is perfect , not only on cakes but also vanilla ice cream.Another good fruit sauce is one made with cherries and a splash of rum.

Sauces add to all sorts of dishes. They liven up the flavor of both savory and sweet dishes. They will definitely add to any holiday meal.

A Political Hot Dish

Food and politics bring like minded people together. Nothing is more like that than voter house parties that are  popping up all over Iowa.Hot dishes and candidates are becoming part of their diets these days.

Regular contributor Kim Severson wrote about this interesting tradition in yesterday's New York Times Food section.It works in one candidate's favor . Amy Klobuchar is well familiar with a variation of this, the Minnesota church gathering and a dish specific to the state - the hot dish. This is a mix of protein, starch and vegetables held together with a creamy sauce baked until it bubbles. It helped conserve meat a century ago during World War One and helped feed families during the Depression. Nowadays it's topped with Tater Tots and/or mixed with rice. Hot dishes offer working parents an inexpensive way to get an easily made  dinner on the table after a long work day. Ms. Klobuchar 's Taconite Tater Tot Hot Dish, named for a rock mined in the Iron Range, located in northeastern Minnesota. Hers is a mix of chicken and ground beef with onion, typical ingredients yet she zings it up with the addition of cheddar jack cheese. Some found it too spicy, others liked it.

It's not the first time hot dish made political news. Disgraced pol, Al Franken created a hot dish competition as a way of uniting the state's congressional delegation. Not surprisingly Senator Klobuchar won. In 2017 an unusual dish won, thanks to Representative  Democrat Colin Peterson. His dish , A Right To Bear Arms had bear (!) meat in it!!!!Representative Betty McCollom, also a Democrat created the Asian inspired Hot Dish A-Hmong Friends that had cabbage and ground beef topped with fried egg roll wrappers. She paid homage to the large Hmong population from China, Laos and Vietnam who made up her district. Controversial Ilhan Omar made a hot dish full of chickpeas , chutney and , of course, Tater Tots. It's called Moga-Hot-Dishu and was inspired by a Minnesota blogger's samosa chaatdish. For something closer to the Midwestern heart there was Republican Jim Haggedorn, Ms Klobuchar's close competition, who created Make'n Bacon Great Again. His hot fish had two pounds of bacon and a pound of sausage mixed with eggs and cheddar. Hot dish can be made fancy as "What's Eating America" host and Senator Klobuchar friend Andrew Zimmer can attest. He has created fancy versions with turkey legs and veloute. He does go back to a more humble recipes of green beans, turkey, beef and Tater Tots.

The Minnesota Hot Dish not only unites families but also Iowa voters too. This hearty dish can help soothe tensions and create long time allies. It's also a good dish to serve on a winter's night too.