Sauce

Solar salt is coarse and crunchy and keeps its shape; Asian markets stock it, but kosher salt is fine, too.

Miso and hot pepper paste are at the root of every ssam sauce, but no two household's are the same. Tweak it to your liking.

This fish is topped with cilantro, but it's also great with pickled ginger.

This ubiquitous and essential condiment is a bright and spicy mix of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter flavors.

This revelatory sauce starts with a dry caramel, meaning no water is added to the sugar. It will take on color quickly and is less likely to crystallize.

Editor's note: Use this recipe to make Rawia Bishara's Eggplant Napoleon . The first time I ever tasted pesto, I was hooked. I remember the first meal I made using it like it was yesterday—linguini tossed with pesto, topped with fried eggplant and served with fresh home-baked bread. When I use pesto this way, as a sauce, I generally make it with pine nuts. If I'm going to incorporate it into a dish, I use almonds, which are less expensive.

Editor's note: Use this recipe to make Rawia Bishara's Brussels Sprouts with Panko . Tahini sauce, a smooth blend of toasted sesame paste, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil, is ubiquitous in Middle Eastern kitchens. It is the condiment. There is hardly a dish that isn't enhanced by it—drizzled on Falafel sandwiches and over Brussels Sprouts with Panko; blended with pureed chickpeas for Hummus and with charred eggplant for Baba Ghanouj. My favorite Whole Fried Fish is served with this sauce mixed with parsley. At Tanoreen, I mix it into salad dressings and drizzle it into cauliflower casseroles. My daughter? She dips French fries into it! Learn to make this and you will have a simple, delicious, versatile sauce to add to your repertoire.

Editor's Note: Serve this sauce with Cathal Armstrong's Corned Beef

Cabbage is my new favorite vegetable chip—especially sprinkled with toasted caraway and dipped in yogurt.

This versatile oil is a great way to bring heat to just about any dish.

One whiff of this hearty, fragrant sauce bubbling on your stove and you'll think you've just parachuted into the Apennines right in front of a trattoria, in sheep country. The mountains of central Italy—notably in the Abruzzo and Molise regions—have always been populated by shepherds. Consequently, lamb is the basic meat, and the cheeses are made from sheep's milk. Shoulder would be our cut of choice, but really any lamb stew meat will do. Even though the recipe calls for boneless meat, if you have some lamb on the bone, throw it in. The bones will add flavor and will be easy to remove once the sauce is cooked. Lamb is fatty, so the sauce will benefit from overnight chilling and subsequent degreasing. But if you can't bear to throw away that yummy lamb fat, roast some potatoes Italian style—cut up in small pieces with lots of rosemary—and use the lamb fat instead of olive oil.

This simple but delicious sauce is named for the town of Amatrice, in the mountainous northeastern panhandle of Lazio, near Abruzzo and the Marche. It seems incredible for such an easy, humble sauce, but this is one of the dishes self-appointed purists (read fanatics) will fight over to the death, or at least death by boredom. You have to use spaghetti or bucatini, they say—nor is it that simple, since there are spaghetti-only and bucatini-only factions. No cheese but pecorino is permitted. And woe betide you if you use pancetta in place of guanciale. There is, however, some room for individual expression. Some cooks use onion and chile, some not. A few swear by a splash of white wine "to cut the fat." The pecorino should ideally be that made in Amatrice or Abruzzo or Sicily, milder and fattier than pecorino romano, but pecorino romano is certainly what you'll find used in Rome. (Pecorino romano is a kind of cheese from a large designated area that includes the entire Lazio and Sardegna regions and the province of Grosseto in Tuscany, not just Rome; it is widely available in the United States.) Parmigiano is not used in amatriciana; it's made with cow's milk, and Rome and its mountainous hinterland is traditionally a land of sheep, after all. The shepherds of yesteryear, who spent months in the hills with their flocks, would make this flavorful dish for themselves. You can imagine that they were not worried about someone calling the food police if they grabbed a piece of pancetta instead of guanciale or one kind of sheep cheese instead of another. But they would never have used smoked bacon, which is not part of their tradition. Like many rustic, simple sauces that have found immortality on trattoria menus throughout Italy (and beyond), this dish is only as good as its ingredients. Take the tomatoes. The rugged mountainous area of northeastern Lazio where Amatrice is located was never great tomato-growing territory, or at least not for most of the year, so it was normal to use canned or jarred tomatoes. But the most delicious amatriciana I've ever tasted was made by Oretta (of course) at her house about halfway between Rome and Amatrice with tomatoes from her garden. After her ecstatic guests had practically licked their plates, she announced with an air of regret that this delicious dish was "not really l'amatriciana" because she had used fresh tomatoes. She later revised the statement to the more reasonable pronouncement that if you have a basketful of gorgeous San Marzano tomatoes from your garden, of course you should peel and seed them and make the sauce, and handed me a jar of her home-canned tomatoes to use in the winter. Whether you use fresh or canned, the result is a red sauce studded with bits of lightly fried pork, but you don't want it too red. The pasta and guanciale should be coated with a thin mantle of sauce, not hidden. Don't let the gloppy, oversauced trattoria version be your model. The cheese is sharp and salty, but, again, don't use too much. Many people consider onion a deviation from the sacred original, but hardly anyone thinks it doesn't taste good. In fact, it is delicious. If you use it, add a small chopped onion to the guanciale fat and sauté until transparent, then add the tomato.

This simple sauce goes well with spring rolls as a dipping sauce. Also, it makes a good marinade for seafood. I once served grilled trout marinated in this sauce to a friend who disliked fish—it completely changed his mind!

An easy fancy meal with a bonus: Mushrooms and tomato may fight cancer.

The plummy-berry notes of red wine are highlighted when mixed with chocolate and butter into a glaze that drips over the edges of this decadent dark chocolate cake.

This smoky, fiery concoction is inspired by Bar Amá's "Bus Driver" salsa.