A few years ago, we were moving to a new house, in a new city, about an hour and a half away. Now, this wasn’t a “toss everything into boxes and transport it from one place to another “move. It was a “take everything out, look through it and decide what comes, what goes and what goes into storage” move. You know how it is ~ stuff out, boxes everywhere, and you’re going nonstop.
Very fortunately, one of the friends who came to help took on the task of making sure we all were fed during that time. What a blessing that was – I now think that everyone who moves should always have someone designated as the chef… But, there were times when she wasn’t there, so on one of those nights, another friend and I were in charge of dinner. And yes, it was one of those times when we took out anything that we could find and decided what to make of it. We ended up with steamed veggies (there may or may not have been tofu involved), and this amazing sauce that was dubbed “The Sauce of Fire”. Basically it was a great coconut milk-almond butter sauce with more cayenne than any person should ever have access to. Seriously… it was that hot. We had that conversation that all of us have had many times over – “What can we put in it to get rid of the cayenne/salt/garlic/ginger taste?” I don’t think we came up with a solution that night (other than adding every bit of coconut milk that we could find), but yet somehow everyone managed to eat it.
So today, despite the 100-degree weather, I had a craving for tofu & veggies with the Sauce of Fire – but this time, I decided not to cook the sauce and made it actually palatable 🙂 It was really great….
The result was steamed veggies, pan-fried tofu (to get it a little brown & crispy) with an amazing blended sauce, served with a combo of brown rice and buckwheat. Just the comfort food that we need sometimes….. and it’s so easy! (And if you look closely, you can see the little specks of cayenne throughout the sauce!)
The Sauce of Fire
- 1 can of coconut milk (the full-fat kind, not light)
- 3 tablespoons almond butter
- 1/2 inch fresh ginger
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 shakes of cayenne
Blend it all together for an amazing creamy-spicy sauce and serve over your favorite grain/veggie/protein combination.
This is a wonderfully delicious light sauce – for a thicker sauce, just reduce the amount of coconut milk.
Kelli's Vegan Kitchen 
Did you really do it? Recreate the Sauce of Fire? Oh I am so so glad.
I think I did it, but it almost seemed too easy 🙂 Can you think of anything else that we might have used in the original? Everyone loved it this way though…..
I’m intrigued by the brown rice/buckwheat combination. Do you use a rice cooker? Did you combine the grains & cook together, or cook separately? What proportion did you use?
Sauce of Fire sounds good, I’ll have to give that a try. Even if I tweak it in my kitchen, I may steal the name.
Hi Bhavani ~ Yes, I used a rice cooker for this. I threw both grains in at once and used slightly more than twice as much water. When I do it on the stove, I use a little less than 2x the water, so the grains aren’t sticky, but our rice cooker automatically goes to a “warm” setting once cooked and it all tends to dry out if I don’t add a little extra water. If you tweak it, definitely let us know!
You had me at SAUCE OF FIRE! Definitely whipping up some of that goodness ASAP.