Discover 5 sauce ideas to create a broader food menu for dysphagia.
Head and neck cancers best food friend
Housekeeping: This was one of my very first posts back in 2021.
Still relevant today and I thought we should revisit sauce.
The other thing I have been working on is my Amazon Author Profile - it’s looking very sparse but I had to be brave and just make a start - head and neck cancer is not big on Amazon! Follow along if that’s your thing.
We don't think much about sauces until we get a bad one. You know that packet flavoured gloop thrown on top of an otherwise good Parmi?
A parmi for our non Australian readers is a Parmigiana we literally eat chicken, beef and Veal parmi’s in our pubs and cafes and has become a food icon here. It’s rare to get a bad Parmi sauce but it does happen.
A good sauce should add flavour, moisture and visual appeal.
Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin Salsa, meaning salted.
Way back when Australia won the America’s Cup - I was starting my career in the culinary arts, learning to become a chef and the first thing we were taught was the art of making stock and sauce.
Building blocks for everything else that came after that. If you have the basics down then you can adapt everything and anything to suit your own food mode and flavour profile preference. Today I use that knowledge to create my new daily food / menu planning based on how my swallow is on that particular day or week.
For example if I am struggling with fibroids, or ORN or dry mouth I can alter my weekly menu planning accordingly.
Who weekly plans menus I hear you ask!
In the days before refrigeration
when foods took longer to get from the source of supply to the kitchen, sauces were richer and more highly concentrated than they are today, the reason being they were often used to disguise the staleness of the meat or fish.
Present day requests for more of a “complementary” sauce or one to aid digestion such as that of apple sauce with pork.
Now I incorporate the complementary with the necessity
There are five French sauces that every cook should know.
It will add to your cooking repertoire and if you suffer from dysphagia, will add a whole new dimension to what you can potentially eat.
These five sauces (mother sauces) are the basic building blocks of all other sauces and it is imperative to master these (well at least a couple) so that you can build on your ability to improve & increase the array of food you can potentially eat orally.
The ingredients required are basic, and in mastering them, you open yourself up to the creation of many great classic dishes.
The building blocks of sauces should enable you to dollop and drizzle your way through eating by creating a medium that clings and smothers your food.
Sauces should be ‘stable’ meaning they don’t separate. It is worth practicing and getting these sauces into your cooking repertoire, as always have the tinned versions on hand particularly in the beginning, but as your food life evolves make sure you know and understand the basics of good stock & sauce making.
Want to know more ? Paid subscribers you can download The 5 mother sauces below and if you would like you can purchase The Complete Guide to How I started Eating Socially here