This book is excellent. The receipts are so easy to make. I have had other pasta sauce books but this one is the tops.
(Thanks to Net Galley for this Book).

Love this book! I'm always trying to figure out how I can elevate a dish I am cooking and sometimes you really just need a good sauce to go with the dish. I can't wait to try a lot of the recipes in this book! Highly recommend.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces - The Best Italian Pestos, Marinaras, Ragùs, and Other Cooked and Fresh Sauces for Every Type of Pasta Imaginable by Allan Bay offers an amazing array of sauces, especially ones suitable for the vegetarian. Most helpful was the Introduction where the author “define(s)“ragu” a partially creamy sauce made with ingredients cut into pieces; a “sauce” as a blended condiment, and a “pesto” when the ingredients have been pounded and blended.”, and also the Reader’s Guide with an explanation of Soffrito and descriptions of pasta and rice varieties.

I found this book to be more of a manual than cookbook. By this I mean that there were no descriptions or photos of the prepared dish. The ingredients and instructions were there, I was just unsure of the outcome. Was the sauce thick, thin, chunky or otherwise? How would I know whether my outcome was correct? (I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy and all opinions are my own.) This book offers a great compendium of sauces and is more suited to the experienced cook rather than a novice.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is BIBLE for pasta and sauce with 200 recipes for pestos, ragùs, and sauces. Most are savory but some are also sweet and the style of pasta varies throughout. The recipes in this book are accessible, versatile, and interesting. I love that each recipe gives you a few suggestions of what the sauce is best on and what else it goes well with. This allows for endless customization and interpretation by each cook.

The sections found in this book are the following:
-Healthy and Vibrant Vegetable Sauces
-Everybody Loves Pesto
-A Treasury of Tomato Sauces
-Cheese Sauces and Egg Sauces
-All Kind of Ragùs
-Fresh From the Sea Fish and Seafood Sauces
-Hearty Meat Sauces
-The Basics

This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves pasta - don't miss this one! Thank you to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the ARC. The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is out now!

A super update on pasta sauces, old and new, classic favorites and this author's new creations. Well worth looking at if you and your family enjoy pasta in all its forms.

This book is a gorgeous compilation of great sounding sauces. For the non-Italian cook, like myself, it offers a multitude of pasta sauces that I'd never even dreamed of. The recipes use scratch ingredients, so the cook knows exactly what's going into the sauce. The book does not include instruction on how to make the entire meal - only the sauces. But that's what the book is all about that's the title of the book.

Some things that I particularly like about this book are:
-The first few pages contain explanations of what ingredients are, such as a soffrito, or a grana
-The recipes are simple, each on only one page. Some will take minutes to prepare, others will take hours
- With each recipe, you'll find a list of things that the sauce is "Best On" and some that "Goes Well On"

I was provided with an advance reader copy of this book. This is my honest review.

Very comprehensive book of pasta sauces. Most of the recipes have a handful of ingredients, and what the sauce would go best on, and go well with as well. Nicely laid out, with lovely pictures accompanying the recipes.

I see myself adding this to my list of recipe books! Thank you Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the ARC!

I am sure the cooks out there looking for unique pestos and different ideas for pasta will love this book but for me it wasn’t my cooking style . I grew up always searching for that authentic Italian gravy … the perfect red sauce . This wasn’t it, but I will keep searching.

I have to say that I am always looking for new pasta sauce recipes and found a few in this book which I will certainly be trying.

It is a well laid out cookbook and easy to follow. The recipes aren't overly complicated and the ingredients are what you would expect and easy to obtain. There is quite a variety of recipes that cover meat, vegetable, seafood and so much more.

This is a book I would certainly use and will be using as I have already earmarked a number of recipes to try.
Asparagus and Pine Nut Sauce
Vegetable Carbonara
Pumpkin Pancetta Sauce
Spicy Tomato Sauce and Red Onions
Red Mushroom Ragu
Beef Ragu Pizzaiola Style
Red Lamb Ragu
Delicate Shrimp Sauce
Seafood Carbonara
and all of the Cheese Sauce recipes

I think I will be cooking pasta a few times in the weeks to come
YUM!

I absolutely love pasta - any size, shape and colour, so when I saw there’s a whole book dedicated to different sauces for it, I knew I needed to read it! I’m so glad I did - I LOVED it. I found myself bookmarking every other page, saying “that sounds delicious” to each one. Each recipe has clear, concise step by step instructions with some accompanying photographs to guide you through. They are made up from simple, accessible, yet delicious ingredients - I would recommend this to any food lover!

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group – Harvard Common Press and Netgalley for an eARC of this book to read and review.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is a comprehensive book with a wide variety of recipes for pasta sauces.
They include pestos, marinaras, ragus and lots more. There are pictures of ingredients but not really any of completed sauces or recipes using the sauce (which I would have preferred). The book covers a lot more than the traditional recipes and would be great for all pasta lovers.

I received an ARC of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a wonderful cookbook. It is filled with interesting sauces, but that still have ingredients that can easily be found at the grocery store. I'm allergic to tomato and so I'm always struggling to find tomato-free pasta sauces, and this book has quite a few (in addition to some tomato-based recipes!)

This is a detailed book of Italian sauces. Recipes are in chapters on vegetable sauces, pestos, tomato sauces, cheese- and egg-based sauces, ragus, fish and seafood sauces, meat sauces, and basics.
While there were quite a few color photos, they were all of ingredients only. No photos of finished sauces. I know a whole book of sauce pictures would be repetitive/not exciting, but some finished dish pictures would have been great. Even better would have been some example photos of the various consistencies of sauces.
I really liked that each recipe had a section of "best on" and then additional "goes well on" suggestions for serving. These went beyond traditional pastas. Instructions were fairly straightforward.
Overall a good sauce book but the lack of finished dish pictures makes me think it would be best for cooks who have a bit of experience.

The Complete Book of Pasta Sauces is a theme-specific collection of recipes for a wide variety of sauces written and developed by Allan Bay. Due out 18th Oct 2022 from Quarto on their Harvard Common Press imprint, it's 256 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is an unusual collection. The recipes included are _only_ for the sauces/wet components of the meals and not complete dishes. There are suggestions for each recipe such as accompaniments (best on ____, goes well with ____) but no complementary info, no menu information, no background, and not many alternative presentations.

Recipes are arranged thematically: vegetable sauces, pesto, tomato sauces, cheese & egg sauces, ragu, fish & seafood sauces, hearty meat sauces, and the basics. Ingredients are written with a title, very little introductory/background info, ingredients in a bullet list sidebar, and followed by *very* short cooking directions. Ingredient measurements are given in imperial (American) measurements, followed by metric in parentheses (yay!).

About 20% of the recipes are accompanied by one or more stock photos of relevant foodstuffs (nuts, fish, vegetables, etc). The recipes collected here are not accompanied by finished/serving photos of the dishes. The author has included a cross referenced index which includes recipes listed by main ingredient, which I found very helpful.

This would be a good choice for cookbook reference collectors, since it is a fairly comprehensive collection of sauces. It would be a less optimal choice for beginning cooks, as there are no photos and prep/full meal instructions are scanty at best. That being said, this is a solid kitchen reference and cooks who love to experiment with presentations and menus will find a lot to love here.

Three and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.