For the love of sauce...

What is so enticing about the photo above? You may not register it--except unconsciously--but it is that tiny drip coming off the right side of that delectable morsel of grilled steak. Rare steaks drip like that...but not everybody likes their food dripping blood.

That's why sauces got invented. They hook us into the ancient, primordial connection between our appetite and dripping blood--while catering to our squeamish modern sensibilities.

I love sauces. Food tastes so much richer with a sauce. The other day, they had the most scrumptuous tuna steaks on sale at the local grocer, and it made me think of a sauce I particularly loved that I'd eaten years ago. That tells you something--when a sauce is memorable from YEARS before. Of course, it could just tell you something about me. :)

The problem with sauces, for a fat girl, is that they are usually fattening or unhealthy in some way (full of chemicals, processed, unhealthy additives, too much sodium, too much cholesterol, etc.). I just knew this sauce couldn't have been good for me. It tasted too good.

But while I was eating that tuna steak (sauceless), I couldn't stop savoring the remembered flavor of that unforgettable sauce. So I emailed the restaurant where I'd eaten it. They were closed for renovations and from a quick scan of their online menu, they no longer served the grilled tuna dish anyway, but the corporate office got back to me with the recipe (in gallons). I did the math and brought it down to two cups of sauce (roughly).

The crazy thing is...it's not unhealthy.

It's awesome on grilled tuna so I imagine it would be good on any fish, but I'm going to try it on all kinds of things.

Beware, though, of one issue with this sauce. It's got beer in it. Now I put beer in my barbeque sauce (and sometimes in my gumbo) and I put wine in all kinds of things. Cooking with alcohol is normally not a problem because the alcohol cooks off and only the flavoring remains. It normally doesn't even bother recovering alcoholics (though you should always ask). Problem with this recipe is, you don't cook it. That's live beer in there. Now, I'm not a drinker but I don't have a problem with a splash of beer in my sauce. I respect, though, that you might. Your faith might be the reason, or maybe you are a recovering alcoholic, or someone in your family could be. Either way, just beware. Usually when people are substituting something for beer in a recipe, they use a vegetable broth. You could try that if the beer is a problem.

Have a go at it and let me know what you think. The recipe is simple.

The Unforgettable Sauce

Light Beer (your favorite brand)
3/4 cup

Soy Sauce (I like San J's organic wheat-free tamari)

3/4 cup

Colman's Dry Mustard

1/2 cup

Extra-Strong Dijon Mustard (I like Sir Kensington's organic brand)

1/6 cup (or more to taste)

Whisk it together and that's all there is to it. It's especially lovely topped with chopped green onions.