Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m really glad you’re here!
Today, I’m continuing my series on the “mother” sauces of California Cuisine. This is my final recipe featuring my first choice for a mother sauce: mayonnaise. Please check out the last six or so posts to see other fun recipes using mayonnaise such as pesto aioli, honey-pecan prawns, tartar sauce and even a terrific chocolate-mayonnaise cake!
While writing my series on the fundamental sauces of California Cuisine, a good friend asked me what the equivalent of “fry sauce” is in California Cuisine. I had to admit that I didn’t know what fry sauce was. She explained that it was a sauce native to Utah that was mostly a mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup that is served ubiquitously with French fries all over the intermountain west. From what I can find, the closest thing to a California version of fry sauce is the Secret Sauce used at In-and-Out Burgers, which appears to be more of a Thousand Island dressing–mayo, ketchup, probably pickle relish of some kind, and some spices.
For this blog, I am re-defining fry sauce in California Cuisine as sun-dried tomato aioli. Sun-dried tomatoes, along with aioli and avocado toast became a bit of a punchline among foodies in the ’90’s and ’00’s and could be found on just about every menu in California, whether it belonged in the food or not. Sun-dried tomatoes have a pretty strong flavor and a little can go a long way. However, when used appropriately and in moderation, they’re delicious, so it’s an ingredient that should be used judiciously. Unfortunately, a lot of folks ascribed to the idea that “if a little is good, a lot must be great!” and for a while it was quite overused.
If you’re looking for a less “high-octane” version of sun-dried tomatoes, try my recipe for oven-roasted tomatoes. I liberate them from their slow roast when they’re still pliable and retain some of their juice, they freeze beautifully, and there’s no need for reconstituting. But, good quality sun-dried tomatoes are plentiful at farmer’s markets and are easily reconstituted in hot water for use in your recipes. Or–you can squeeze a little out of a tube, like I did for this recipe:
I found this tube of Gia sun-dried tomato paste at my local gourmet market and it’s also available for order on Amazon. It’s good quality and I like the tubes of tomato paste because when you only need a little, like you do for this recipe, you don’t have to toss the rest of the can. It will store in the fridge for a month or more for use in future recipes. I will warn you to avoid the sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil. The only time I tried them, the oil was already rancid and tasted terrible–I had to throw the whole thing out–both the food I was making and the jar of tomatoes.
I’ve never had the fry sauce in Utah, but given the ingredients in the recipes I’ve been able to find and what I’ve read about it, it tends to be a little sweet. Because I’m using sun-dried tomatoes instead of ketchup, my California fry sauce is decidedly not sweet. It is delicious as a dipping sauce for vegetables, breads, on seafood (particularly crab cakes!) and turns almost any sandwich into a party, but particularly my super-veggie sandwich! And if you’d like to use it as a condiment for fries, try it with my terrific oven-roasted potatoes!
Tune in later in the week when I will continue my series on the fundamental sauces of California Cuisine–next up: vinaigrettes!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
