This chapter is about sauces to go with fish and meat, not sauces to go with pasta.
Most of the sauces we make start with the basic ingredients that make up the Italian larder: ie olive oil, salted anchovies, capers, wine vinegars, bread, garlic and a few spices, particularly dried chilli, dried fennel seeds, peppercorns and oregano.
The addition of fresh seasonal herbs that Italians grow, however small their garden or window box, such as basil, flat leaf parsley, rosemary and sage forms the body of these sauces.
Three of the recipes we have chosen are based on a single special ingredient. Red Chilli Sauce that requires large fleshy red chillies; whole grated raw horseradish root for the sauce that famously accompanies Bollito Misto; salted anchovy fillets for Anchovy and Rosemary Sauce.
We make this simple sauce every day to be spooned over char-grilled squid. The bright red, long chillies with thick, juicy flesh have the right heat, not too hot nor too mild.
Horseradish grows wild all over Europe, and in northern Italy is used in sauces to accompany Bollito Misto. We learnt this recipe from eating in a restaurant specialising in bollito.
Like the Horseradish Sauce, this sauce is based on stale bread soaked in wine vinegar – never balsamic as it is too strong. Chopped hard-boiled egg yolks are added to the bread to make the sauce creamy; the tarragon, anchovies and capers are there for the flavour.
This sauce is simply a combination of salted anchovies and rosemary, lemon juice and olive oil. The anchovies and the rosemary when pounded together give a pungent flavour which is diluted with lemon juice and olive oil. We use the sauce with fish like monkfish and scallops. It’s quite sharp, so it complements the sweetness.
Salsa Verde is a traditional Italian sauce and is usually served with meats; we make our salsa verde thick. We love it with lamb but also with fish.
Use green herbs that are in season. In summer use parsley, basil and mint; in winter just parsley and mint. Add salted anchovies, red wine vinegar, mustard, oil and garlic to make this sauce robust.
This is a sauce we discovered in Florence, and is made with aromatic small-leaf herbs, such as oregano, wild mint, marjoram and fennel. Once again it is made with stale bread, this time soaked in water as well as vinegar, and then mixed with the herbs, capers, anchovies and olive oil, making a wet sauce.
The red of the recipe can come from peppers alone if they are ripe, or tomatoes and peppers together if made at the end of the summer. In the winter you can use tinned tomatoes and add salted anchovies as well as fresh red chillies to give the sauce strength.
It’s delicious with grilled monkfish, any kind of grilled lamb, or with Italian sausages.
We use this to melt into the juices of the cooked pheasant to make a simple, gamey sauce.
