The Next "It" Sauce

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Pesto was so nineties. There was a time when pesto came with everything, from appearing as a topping on a piece of salmon to a spread on sandwiches to the traditional pasta sauce. Then came the aughts and pesto was just a little too 20th century for most chefs.

Looking for an herby sauce to replace it, chefs looked south and picked up on chimichurri. While Italian pesto was a little too passé, the quintessential Argentinean chimichurri was certainly au courant. And now with this decade coming to a close, you might wonder, what will be the “it” condiment of the coming decade? If you are looking to jump out a bit ahead of the culinary trend, I predict you need to look no further than the North African marinade and condiment known as chermoula.

Even though these sauces/marinades/condiments come from very different parts of the world, they share many similar components. Essentially, each is an intensely herb-based sauce mixed with garlic, oil, salt, and some other combination of ingredients. The ingredients are blended together, crushed in a mortar and pestle, or chopped finely and stirred. The mixture can be made thick as with pesto to become spaghetti clinging sauce or it can be thinned with oil to coat everything from fish fillets to a leg of lamb as a marinade.

Pesto originated in the Ligurian region of Italy as a means to use basil (its sister sauce, pistou, took root in Provence, France, about the same time). The Latin root of pesto means "to crush," referring to the crushing of the herbs with garlic, salt, oil, nuts, and sometimes cheese. A traditional pesto as we know it today consists of basil, olive oil, garlic, salt, pine nuts, and Parmigiano Reggiano.

Although pesto was first mentioned in American publications such as The New York Times and Sunset magazine as early as the 1940s, it did not gain widespread popularity until the '80s and '90s. Since Americans embraced pesto, it has been found in about as many combinations as you can find nuts, herbs, and cheese. Now arugula might replace the basil or walnuts or pine nuts, but the essence of the sauce remains the same.

On the other side of the globe, the influence of French, Italian and Spanish colonists no doubt played a part in the development of chimichurri sauce in Argentina. Like its European predecessor, chimichurri is a blend of herbs, most often parsley with oregano, garlic, oil, and vinegar with other optional spices. Chimichurri can be used as a marinade but most often finds its way onto the Argentinean table as an accompaniment to the vast amount of meat, mostly beef, that is served.

Argentina being one of the world’s leading food producers, particularly of beef, its cuisine has developed around a high protein diet with the strong taste of chimichurri offsetting the richness of grilled meats. It is no wonder that America, another meat loving society, has just begun to embrace this potent condiment over the last few years.

Basil, the key component of pesto, most likely originated in North Africa. So I think it is only fitting that the next it sauce should take us back to that part of the world. Chermoula, a marinade and condiment used in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, bears a resemblance to both pesto and chimichurri. Once again herbs, in this case parsley and cilantro, are blended with oil, salt, and garlic. This sauce takes the flavor up a notch with the addition of chopped onion, cumin, lemon juice, chili powder and optional spices such as saffron, paprika or the Arabic spice blend, ras el hanout.

Chermoula will most often be used as a marinade for fish but works equally well as a marinade for just about any meat as well as a condiment for everything from skirt steak to pork loin. American chefs, always on the look-out for the next cool thing in the kitchen, are just beginning to play around with this version of the herby condiment.

It is not clear who started this herb-sauce trend. But whoever were the originators, its popularity has endured both the test of time and tastes of a wide variety of cultures. It may have taken Americans until the last few decades to catch up with the rest of the world, but now we are as crazy about these potent herb and oil blends as any Italian, Moroccan, or Argentinean.

If you are a little behind the curve, perhaps try making your own pesto. If you are looking to join the 21st century, you might want to graduate to a chimichurri. And if you want to really be ahead of the American culinary curve, be the first kid on the block to dish up this weekend’s steak with a side of chermoula.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 1/2 pound skirt steak
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• salt and pepper
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/2 medium onion
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
• 3/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 6 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika