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Sauces and Dressings

A good sauce can transform a dish. This collection features all of my favorite sauce recipes from tzatziki, Greek cucumber-yogurt sauce, to fresh tomato sauce to the only green sauce you need to this Thanksgiving staple: red wine cranberry sauce.

Broiled tarragon chicken breasts on a board.

Broiled Tarragon Chicken Breasts

Grass-fed steak with balsamic caper sauce

Grass-fed Steaks with Balsamic-Caper Sauce + Oven-Roasted Potatoes

I love this peanut sauce, one I have made a number of times over the years, for its versatility: for chicken satay, lettuce wraps, and fresh spring rolls. It, along with copious amounts of Thai basil, even transforms tofu. // alexandracooks.com

All-Purpose Thai Peanut Sauce

Honey buttermilk rolls.

Honey-Buttermilk Dinner Rolls, Poached Pears & Aunt Vicki’s Salad Dressing

A portion of sheet pan pasta gratin with kale on a plate.

Sheet Pan Pasta Gratin with Kale

Alice Waters’s Baked Goat Cheese Salad

A bowl of ginger-sesame soba and salmon.

Ginger-Sesame Soba Noodles with Cedar Plank Salmon

This summer vegetable salad comes together in no time—as the shallots macerate in the vinegar for the dressing, you can prep everything else: slice the radishes, turnips, scallions, etc. With a hunk of bread on the side, the meal is complete. // alexandracooks.com

10-Minute Meal: Greens + Tuna + Shallot Vinaigrette

A plate of an egg taco topped with roasted vegetable salsa.

Breakfast Tacos with Roasted Poblano and Corn Salsa + Excellent Mail-Order Flour Tortillas

This pesto pasta can be made with anything. All you really need is a bunch of herbs, a handful of nuts and some sort of hard salty cheese. While nothing perhaps marries quite as well as basil, pine nuts and parmesan, variations made with with other cilantro and parsley, walnuts and almonds, and Pecorino and Grana do the job quite nicely. // alexandracooks.com

Simple, Fresh Homemade Pesto Sauce with Pasta

Just when you think you have nothing to serve for dinner, toasted breadcrumbs along with a few pantry items — garlic, crushed red pepper flakes and anchovies — come to the rescue, working together to produce an unbelievably tasty dinner. This is pantry cooking at its finest — quick, easy, delicious. // alexandracooks.com

Pasta with Crispy Bread Crumbs, Anchovies, and Garlic

New Potatoes with Green Harissa

pi tart

A Tart, A Baby, A Breakfast

This is my favorite recipe for buttermilk dressing, which I love for slaw — so much lighter than mayonnaise-based dressings, and delicious, too: vinegar, Worcestershire, and hot sauce give it a nice kick/bite. To put it all together, I used cabbage, basil, cilantro, scallions, and two turnips as well as a couple of carrots. // alexandracooks.com

CSA Week 4: Buttermilk Dressing for Slaw | Reviving Greens | Zucchini Pickles

This recipe for a blistered salsa roja, made by charring tomatoes, jalapeños, and onions in a skillet is incredibly delicious. And at only, start to finish, 25 minutes to make, you can get it on the table fast. // alexandracooks.com

Huevos Rancheros with Blistered Salsa Roja

Who knew making blue cheese dressing from scratch was so easy? Quickly blitz buttermilk, sour cream, sherry vinegar and crumbly aged blue cheese in the blender and ta-da you'll have delectable homemade blue cheese dressing before your eyes. // alexandracooks.com

Classic Blue Cheese Dressing (or Dip!)

Grilled Cheese with Curried Apple Chutney

At Zuni, these eggs fried in breadcrumbs appear on the Sunday lunch menu accompanied by house-made sausage or bacon, but Zuni's chef-owner Judy Rodgers likes these crunchy eggs for dinner with a salad of bitter greens. I couldn't agree more. // alexandracooks.com

Zuni Cafe’s Fried Eggs In Bread Crumbs

In this kale Cesar salad, the dressing is light and lemony and the kale itself is extremely soft and tender. It's also vegan, the dressing made with vegannaise and vegan Worcestershire. The combination of curly kale, massaged till tender, quick-pickled onions, and toasted pumpkin seeds, which add so much texture and flavor, is so good. I think this is one you have to taste to believe. // alexandracooks.com

Honest Weight’s Vegan Kale Caesar Salad

endive and carrots with white bean and chutney spread

Marisa McClellan’s Blank Slate White Bean Dip with Apple Chutney

A slice of toast with rhubarb jam.

Rhubarb Ice Cream + Rhubarb Jam

These Asian lettuce wraps are simple to prepare, stunning to serve, and exceptionally satisfying to eat. Both the slaw and the meat are incredibly flavorful and the combination of the crunchy cool slaw with the tender hot meat is so yummy. Make it. You'll be happy. I promise. // alexandracooks.com

Asian Lettuce Wraps for Almost Meatless Potluck

Melon & Cucumber Salad

I can say with certainty that I simply enjoy the taste of quince, especially in the form of jam. This quince jam is of course delicious spread on toast with a little butter, but also makes a nice substitute for raspberry jam as the filling in Linzer cookies. Enjoy! // alexandracooks.com

Quince Jam

A glass bowl filled with watermelon gazpacho.

This polenta without fear is delicious. Minimal stirring is required and the addition of a little water towards the end of the cooking process is all the doctoring necessary to produce "creamy, soft, mouth-filling polenta," as described on Bitten. // alexandracooks.com

This simple pasta salad is particularly good warm, when the just-boiled shells melt the cheese, just slightly cook the tomatoes and soak up all the flavors of the olive oil and lemon juice. It can also be prepared ahead and served at room temperature — it tastes better the longer it sits in fact. // alexandracooks.com

Preserved lemons work nicely anywhere lemon and salt work nicely — so, everywhere? — and while there is something about the combination of smoked mozzarella and lemon that just can't be beat, this preserved lemon pizza is a fun combination, too: za'atar with olive oil, fresh ricotta, preserved lemon and basil. // alexandracooks.com

A collection of easy vegetarian recipes to make year-round.

More Vegetarian Recipes