Ideas for Our Fresh Sauces

Our guests keep asking about ideas for our fresh sauces, so here you go!

Butter Chicken Sauce

Butter chicken sauce is essentially a tomato gravy with spices in butter and cream.

One of the most unique ingredients in this sauce is the dried fenugreek leaf.

Here are a few quick meal ideas.

If you are making butter chicken, it's as simple as heating your butter chicken sauce in a pan, and adding 1-2 lbs of your favorite chicken parts. I recommend bone in for flavor, but it's really all about your preference and what you have on hand.

Let the bird cook in the sauce until the chicken is cooked through. Finish with a few pats of butter, it is butter chicken after all. And serve it with naan or steamed rice. Or even serve it with your favorite pasta or egg noodles.

Another way I like to use this sauce for a spectacular flavor and gorgeous presentation, is to take a small whole bird (2.5 lbs or so) and cut into 8 pieces. (You can always ask your butcher to do it for you)

Heat your oven to 400 degrees.

Add the cut up bird along with the sauce to a cast iron or oven safe skillet with a few pats of butter on top.

Place in the oven for 30-40 minutes and dinner is served!

Alternate proteins that work well with our Butter Chicken Sauce are rabbit, duck, Cornish game hens or for a seafood option, try shrimp.

For vegetarians, tofu and butternut squash are terrific. And believe it or not eggplant (roast the eggplant first before you add it to the sauce) is super tasty. For your summer garden vegetables - try zucchini, summer squash, and cauliflower.

Thai Yellow Curry Sauce

This sauce blends the key flavors of Thai cooking. Lemongrass, Markut Lime Leaves, Galanga and of course coconut milk.

This fresh sauce is super versatile. So here goes...

Sear some salmon off, along with sweet peppers and cipollini onions. Heat up your Thai Yellow Curry in a pan and add your salmon and veg. Simmer for a few minutes and voilà you have a show stopper meal. Great meal for entertaining, because you prep everything ahead for a quick assembly.

Any protein works with this sauce. Our seafood favorites are cod, shrimp, and scallops. Lobster would be a treat. You can sear off and add, or simmer in the sauce until cooked.

Pork, beef, chicken - whatever you have on hand will work with this sauce. Think about adding carrots and potatoes, green beans, bell peppers.

For a vegetarian meal - chickpeas and spinach are my favorite combo. But any summer vegetables, winter squashes, onions will work.

And something you may not have thought about... take frozen dumplings and throw them into the sauce to simmer until they are ready to eat! This is a favorite of mine and Ethan's for a quick lunch.

It's a great sauce to use up all the leftover bits and bobs in your fridge. As we are writing this blog, we have Thai Yellow Curry Sauce bubbling on the Third Space stove with peppers, salmon, celery - don't cut off the leaves!, carrots and some rice steaming. Lunch will be served.

Every week, Asha offers fresh sauces at her pop-up pick-up Saturday shop. Order here.

For more recipes featuring flavors from Asha's kitchen, check out her James Beard nominated cook book, My Two Souths.

And my new book gone to print! Publication is October 11th - pre-order your copy now. And keep an eye out for some sneak previews of recipes throughout the summer.