The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is a theme-specific collection of recipes for a wide variety of sauces written and developed by Allan Bay. Due out 18th Oct 2022 from Quarto on their Harvard Common Press imprint, it's 256 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.
This is an unusual collection. The recipes included are _only_ for the sauces/wet components of the meals and not complete dishes. There are suggestions for each recipe such as accompaniments (best on ____, goes well with ____) but no complementary info, no menu information, no background, and not many alternative presentations.
Recipes are arranged thematically: vegetable sauces, pesto, tomato sauces, cheese & egg sauces, ragu, fish & seafood sauces, hearty meat sauces, and the basics. Ingredients are written with a title, very little introductory/background info, ingredients in a bullet list sidebar, and followed by *very* short cooking directions. Ingredient measurements are given in imperial (American) measurements, followed by metric in parentheses (yay!).
About 20% of the recipes are accompanied by one or more stock photos of relevant foodstuffs (nuts, fish, vegetables, etc). The recipes collected here are not accompanied by finished/serving photos of the dishes. The author has included a cross referenced index which includes recipes listed by main ingredient, which I found very helpful.
This would be a good choice for cookbook reference collectors, since it is a fairly comprehensive collection of sauces. It would be a less optimal choice for beginning cooks, as there are no photos and prep/full meal instructions are scanty at best. That being said, this is a solid kitchen reference and cooks who love to experiment with presentations and menus will find a lot to love here.
Three and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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