These ready-to-cook sauces, curries and marinades ensure a flavour-happy, smooth ride for you in the kitchen in 2021
Pinky Danani makes pasta with her homemade pesto sauce. Pics/Satej Shinde
A larger part of 2020 was about living the DIY life. Most of us had discovered a newfound interest in whipping up elaborate menus from scratch. As time passed, we felt the need to seek help without having to try too hard. Through the lockdown, chefs bottled up their best ideas for gravies and sauces in a ready-to-cook avatar that led to dishes being created in minutes. Pinky Danani, a marketing and communications professional who lost her job during the pandemic, launched The Dipping Sauces in September. It focusses on hummus, inspired by her travels to the Middle East, but her pasta and pizza sauces are becoming a rage too. “People like that it is freshly-prepared, home-cooked and saves time.”
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Jewellery designer Minal Punjabi’s story is similar: “The lockdown gave me time to work on my first passion — cooking. Having interned with Moshe Shek years ago, it was fulfilling to launch Peach & Melon, which bottles artisanal sauces and rolls out hand-made pastas.” Her menu includes pesto cream, black bean sauce, five spice chilli garlic and drizzles for aglio olio.
The lockdown also inspired tweaking of businesses and Megha Poddar of White Light Food who catered hand-churned ready-made cooking sauces, gravies and pastes to restaurants, among other products, has now turned her attention to direct customers with the promise of cooking dishes in less than four minutes. The menu celebrates Asian bestsellers like black bean sauce, garlic pepper sauce, khow suey and laksa curry pastes.