Sunday, August 29, 2010

Easy Sauce, Inspired by Romanoffs


My favorite sauce on top of a sweet omelet with fresh blueberries.

So this is my all time favorite put on most anything sweet sauce. But before I give you the recipe of this most excellent sauce I am going to tell you a story:


At the end of high school and the summer before I started college I worked at a not so tiny French-ish cafe and bakery that is really a conglomerate made up of lots of bakeries in lots of other towns: La Madeleine. Not a model of authentically French cuisine, but still lots of tasty, tasty things. I spent a few happy months taking home unsold pastries that were otherwise destined for the trash. I wonder how a flaky, almond croissant with a crackly exterior and tender inside piped with sugared almond paste is ever considered trash. All I know is that I had to clean out the case at 10 o'clock regardless of the deliciousness still lurking inside. I'm having a moment for all those pastries right now, [pause].

Continuing. They had another sweet thing that I also dearly loved but was housed by the salads and not with the pastries, Strawberries Romanoff. Red, ripe strawberries in a oversized goblet and topped (or drowned if you asked for extra) in Romanoff sauce. Creamy, with warm sugary taste with a lovely tang. That sauce is like a velvet robe for fruit. I kid you not. I fell in love. Until a fateful day. [Cue music, dun, dun, dun.]

I was working the line, I was stationed at salads. And I ran out of sauce. No, problem, said my manager. Could I make some more? No, I replied I couldn't I had never made the oh-so-perfect sauce. So he said, let me just get the key to the liquor cabinet and I will make some up. [Freeze frame, cricket in the background.]

I am speechless. I have just found out my favorite special transform fruit into nothing short of dessert sauce is spiked. Brandy, sour cream and brown sugar make it all happen. I thought I would never know its transcendent likeness again.

Skip ahead a few years. I stopped drowning my fruit in boozy sauce when I would visit to La Madeleine; but look at it longingly, since I put down the sauce that fatefully day over a decade ago.  Finally, I decided it was time to make my own stinkin' sauce. And so I did. And I think I might even like it better.

So, ha.

And, I get asked for this recipe, every time I have served it to guests. 

Double ha.

Take that, La Mad.


I bag the booze, go for whole milk yogurt, and stay with the brown sugar. I sometimes add a few drops of vanilla too. Here goes yet another recipe that is embarrassing to write due to ridiculous simplicity:

Romanoff* Sauce
1 cup of whole milk yogurt (yes, you could go lower fat if you wish)
1-2 T. brown sugar
1/4-1/2 t. vanilla, optional

Measure, mix and put on top of most everything.
My current favorites include cake, pie, with fruit or applesauce on top of waffles, pancakes and oatmeal.
Enjoy.

*I like the name so I kept it but pretend this is what would have enjoyed if the Prohibition ever went global.



2 comments:

  1. This sauce looks really good. I'll have to try it on waffles...

    Natasha
    http://days-of-natasha.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. WHERE IS MY COMMENT. I POSTED IT 3 TIMES.
    -clank

    ReplyDelete

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