Turn pasta night from drab to exciting, tired to fresh, with 175 recipes for the best and yummiest pasta sauces imaginable.

Enter author Allan Bay, an expat who lives in Rome who has written some of Italy’s best-selling cookbooks. Bay opens up in these pages a big, bold new world of pasta sauces, some from the classic Italian repertoire, other brilliant new creations of his own. They have all sorts of main ingredients, from beef and chicken to shrimp and clams to glorious veggies from artichokes to zucchini. All of the sauces are easy to prepare and every one cooks up fast.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces includes:

Asparagus and Pine Nut Sauce
Meatball Ragout
Cioppino
Pesto Sauce, plus six different pesto variations
Chicken Ragout
Nantua Sauce with Shrimp
Lamb Ragout with Porcinis
Roman Cauliflower Sauce

There are bowls and bowls of kid-friendly sauces and plenty of grownup sauces, too. Each recipe comes with one to three “Best On” recommendations, along with additional “Also Good On” ideas that range from different shapes of standard wheat pasta to egg noodles, polenta, rice, and more. There are suggestions, too, for serving the various sauces directly on meats, poultry, or fish—something that is very common in Italy but less familiar elsewhere.

This deliciously creative book makes pasta and pasta sauces more exciting than they’ve ever been before. Perfect for the winter nights to come and would make a great Christmas gift for pasta lovers!

My thanks to the author and Quarto Publishing Group for my advance copy to review via NetGalley. Due out 18th November 2022!

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review "The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces." When they say complete book of pasta sauce they mean it! The sheer amount and variety of sauces is amazing from Pestos to Meat sauces. The only down side I found from this cookbook was the lack of pictures of the actual recipes, there were images of the main ingredients but not the actual sauce. There were a lot of images of Italian streets and scenery. It did have a good introduction with information about pastas starches to pair with types of sauces. This would be a great gift to a new home owner or your friends who loves pasta

Turn pasta night from drab to exciting, tired to fresh, with 175 recipes for the best and yummiest pasta sauces imaginable.

Everybody loves pasta but not if it’s made the same way night after night. Families with kids, especially, eat loads of pasta, but it’s awfully easy to get stuck in a “red-sauce rut,” eating one version or another of marinara sauce over and over again. Enter author Allan Bay, an expat who lives in Rome who has written some of Italy’s best-selling cookbooks. Bay opens up in these pages a big, bold new world of pasta sauces, some from the classic Italian repertoire, other brilliant new creations of his own. They have all sorts of main ingredients, from beef and chicken to shrimp and clams to glorious veggies from artichokes to zucchini. All of the sauces are easy to prepare and every one cooks up fast.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces includes:
 
* Asparagus and Pine Nut Sauce
* Meatball Ragout
* Cioppino
* Pesto Sauce, plus six different pesto variations
* Chicken Ragout
* Nantua Sauce with Shrimp
* Lamb Ragout with Porcinis
* Roman Cauliflower Sauce

There are bowls and bowls of kid-friendly sauces and plenty of grownup sauces, too. Each recipe comes with one to three “Best On” recommendations, along with additional “Also Good On” ideas that range from different shapes of standard wheat pasta to egg noodles, polenta, rice, and more. There are suggestions, too, for serving the various sauces directly on meats, poultry, or fish something that is very common in Italy but less familiar elsewhere.

This deliciously creative book makes pasta and pasta sauces more exciting than they’ve ever been before.

Totally recommend I love pasta and I get so bored with the same things so this book totally gave me so many yummy recipes
Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group - Harvard Common Press
I just reviewed The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces by Allan Bay. #TheCompleteBookofPastaSauces #NetGalley

I love this book. It has everything I need, as you can tell from the title, and I can’t wait to try out the medley of sauces it provides. I’m so grateful I received the opportunity to review this book via NetGalley.

3☆ A wide Variety

As much as I wanted to love this book it wasn't really for me.

If you follow my reviews on cook books then you will know that a book with no pictures is uninspiring to me.
I like to read the recipe then look at the picture of the finished product and feel my tummy rumble, as then I know I want to try that recipe out.
Unfortunately this book had no illustrations except the rare few of ingredients.

Also it lacked any description of what the pasta sauce was.
It just had the name of the recipe, the ingredients, what it's best on and what it goes with.
The method was pretty basic and definitely not for a novice cook.
Usually when you read a recipe it gives you at least a short description of what it might taste like for example a delicious spicy and smoky tomato sauce.

One thing I did like was that the ingredients was given in grams, cups ounces and ml. Which is partly why I gave an extra star. Having the ingredients in different weights makes it much easier for everyone.

Just another little mention that some ingredients you may need to look up if your in the UK to find an alternative ie Zucchini is Courgette, Cornstarch is Corn Flour, Heavy Cream is Double Cream.

There is a huge selection of different recipes which will appeal to lots of people. A few I recognised myself.

Overall this book has a lot of potential, I know some people don't mind if there are no illustrations, but when I'm reading a recipe book, and I don't necessarily know the ingredients. I'd like to at least see what the recipe should look like. This book however will definitely appeal to lots of cooks, foodies, or collectors or cooking books.

I have a perpetual quest to find recipes that will be the magic combination of very easy to prepare, yet suitable for dinner guests. I love pasta, but it’s usually an everyday dinner, like buttered with salt, pepper and shrimp; or with bottled marinara sauce. The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is like the master key to pasta sauces! I was interested to see that it was published in Italy in 2016, and now translated. Italian author Allan Bay writes, “I have always been a serial sauceophile: I can’t conceive of a preparation that isn’t topped with an appropriate sauce.”

The sauces are divided by type, such as vegetable sauces, pesto, meat sauces, and more. With each sauce he suggests an accompanying base. Most dress various types of pasta, but he also discusses using the sauces to top veggies, rice, and various proteins. I thought that was really neat, and super useful. In the introduction on techniques, he gives instructions on how to dress cooked pasta and other bases with the various types of sauces.

I chose to make two sauces from the “Healthy and Vibrant Vegetable Sauces” chapter.

All-Purpose Lentil Sauce: A utilitarian name, and I was dubious. Mixing cooked brown lentils, yoghurt and some Italian spices seemed basic, and the sauce was a slightly unappealing brown. But I followed the recipe to the letter, and tossed it with al dente linguine. It was really good! My husband and I both enjoyed it and agreed that the sauce was greater than the sum of its parts. I think the tang of the yoghurt complimented the slightly spicy blended lentils. It was a workhorse of a sauce. It kept well in the fridge, and I repurposed it by topping a bowl of rice and steamed veg one evening; and blending it with balsamic vinegar for a wonderful dressing for my lunchtime salad all week.

Pea and Ricotta Sauce: I found the magic recipe combination! This is a recipe that is both very easy, and suitable for company. I blended peas and ricotta with some olive oil, then added toasted walnuts and garlic and tossed it all with hot cooked penne pasta. Add a good amount of salt and pepper and…yum! I had my self-proclaimed picky sister over to eat with us and she raved about it. I had some leftover ricotta and pea sauce and it was thick enough to top crackers and a bagel for lunch the next day.

I liked this saucy cookbook, and had trouble picking just two recipes to make. The only downside is that I’ve loved to see pictures of the completed sauces, but it’s a small point. There is gorgeous photography in the book, but none of the recipes themselves. I think this would be a great addition to my cookbook collection and look forward to exploring it more.

Thanks to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for a digital ARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

I'll admit that I'd fallen in a pasta rut, consisting of two dishes - mac and cheese, and basic spaghetti with tomato-meat sauce. If I wasn't in the mood for either of those, I wasn't considering any other options. I now feel like I am aware of many more options, some of them surprising - I would never have thought of making a potato sauce for pasta!

But as marvelous and varied as all these recipes seem, I have to be honest. Even after reading the entire cookbook, I still have no idea what a potato sauce should look like. Or an asparagus and pine nut sauce. Or any of the other sauces described in this cookbook. This is because every single picture is a stock, generic photograph. They are beautiful but only have a passing acquaintance with the recipes they are paired with.

We learn to cook with our eyes, not just our hands. This cookbook held such promise, but ultimately left me feeling blind.

My thanks to author Allan Bay, Quarto Publishing Group, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital advance review copy of this book. This review is my honest and unbiased opinion.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces: The Best Italian Pestos, Marinaras, Ragùs, and Other Cooked and Fresh Sauces for Every Type of Pasta Imaginable is a cookbook that belongs on every cookbook shelf. It has dozens of sauces that can be used on all kinds of pasta, as well as other things like crostini, gnocchi, potatoes, meats, poultry, and fish. In fact, every recipe has suggestions as to what to use the sauce on, i.e., types of pasta, crostini, cooked meat and fish, etc., as well as what the dish goes well with. These are helpful suggestions and will give readers great ideas for full meals that aren’t boring. Not only does this book cover pasta sauces, but it features recipes for basic sauces that are used in all sorts of dishes that aren’t pasta.

The recipes are written in the traditional manner with step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow. These recipes are straightforward and suitable for both beginning and advances cooks.
Unfortunately, most of the photographs, which are actually beautiful, are of the ingredients in the sauces rather than finished dishes. This is the only negative aspect of the cookbook and isn’t really a game changer, since the sauces are diverse and tempting.

All told, this is an excellent cookbook and will give readers a good variety of sauces to serve for months.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

A great resource! If you eat pasta often, this book will give you so many new options to jazz it up. This is not a plant-based or vegan friendly book, but with some adjustments, it can still be a great source of inspiration.

A while back I wanted to get an encyclopedia of classic Italian dishes, ones collected from regions and grandmas, the recipies without authors, the ones taught in the home kitchens. This book kind of has that feel. It's authentic, it's thorough about all kinds of pasta sauces you wouldn't suspect and you have never tried... but it's not exactly attractive or fresh, or modern. The recipes sound good mainly, even though the first part with all its blanded vegetables seems a little strange, but I would have really liked photos to have a better idea, or some kind of comment from the author about the taste quality of the recipies.
Interesting, but not quite for me.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC !

I absolutely loved reading and looking at the recipes. There is such a big variety of choice and options with each sauce. I like that the book categorise each kind of sauce eg : vegetables, meaty, with fish, cheese,… it gives me a an impression of a neat book. I really would like to try a lot of these recipe in a near future, that made me quite hungry.
The only “bad” thing will be the quality of the pictures on iPad reading; it look kind of blurry. But I really didn’t care that much as what I was really looking for was the sauce recipe and the choice of them. I would recommend this book, and it is already on my wish list for Christmas :D.

Just call me the sauce queen because I am here for ANY and EVERY and ALL of the sauces. Sign me up baby. This one will have you drooling from sunup to sundown, as you immerse yourself in literally every sauce known to man - thousands of sauces. Some of my special shoutouts go to: the porcini mushroom sauce, eggplant, olive, and caper sauce, champagne potato sauce, classic pesto, cream pesto, artichoke pesto, classic tomato sauce, puttanesca sauce, spicy six cheese sauce, ricotta and salami sauce, lobster ragu, chicken ragu, and more!

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is not a misnomer. When it says complete it means it! hundreds of sauces and variations that can be used to top other foods besides pasta. Many would be great on potatoes, polenta or rice. My family and my husband's family came to America from Italy. I grew up eating some of these sauces. I have never thought of making my sofrito up in batches and freezing it. Full of wonderful tips this book is the perfect reference for making sauces out of anything.

The only thing that could have made this book better is a description of each sauce that includes the region it is from and how it is usually eaten. I personally like chatty cookbooks.

An A-Z of pasta sauces, from classics to more unusual ones. Great layout, easy to follow recipes and I like that each sauce has recommendations for what goes best with it. The photography is ingredient focused so not that inspirational, but this is a great book to have in your collection.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces

Brilliant book for pasta lovers plenty of recipes that are easy to follow so no getting bored with just tomato and carbonara sauce. Plenty of wonderful photos to whet your appetite.
I received this book from Quatro publishing group and Netgalley for a review.

This was a fabulous book of sauces for Pasta.The layout and the beautiful pictures had me wanting to rush and make them myself and I will be trying most of the sauces. This would make a great gift for a foodie.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces by Allan Bay is a literal huge book of pasta sauces.

Some familiar and some that you've never heard of. I really liked that Allan's instructions were all for scratch and having to make them yourself. I also really like that Allan includes 'Best On' and 'Goes Well With' with each sauce, so you can get an idea of how to use said sauce.

I'm not a huge fan of cookbooks that do NOT include photos of finished products. I'm sure it would be quite the task to take pictures of A LOT of sauces, but it would help some people see how it should be finished. Or even give them a visual for how to use the sauce with a dish.

An interesting cookbook with some recipes that I have tried and others that I will try at some point. They seem to work well and are tasty

Instering recipes. Good cook book. Plan to try some of them out and kinda add my own twist to what ever one I use. 5 star book.

Do you hate headnotes on recipes giving you lots of background or sentimental stories? This cookbook contains just the facts, ma'am. Every imaginable type of (mostly Italian) pasta sauces, many of which can also be used for meats, eggs, or even lentils, are included, from a classic red sauce to a vegetable carbonara with stops along the way. Efficient if not elegant, this book is exactly what it says on the label.