Plain rice, plain pasta, a plain potato, a plain piece of chicken — none of these are a problem. They are a base waiting for the part most people skip. A sauce is the difference between ingredients on a plate and a meal, and none of the five below takes longer than the base does to cook.
The formula
Every sauce worth making is fat, acid, salt and something aromatic, in whatever proportion tastes right to you. Oil or butter or yoghurt. Lemon or vinegar. Salt, or something salty like soy, anchovy, miso or a hard cheese. And one loud thing: garlic, chilli, herbs, mustard, spice. Once you can see those four parts, you stop needing recipes and start opening cupboards.
The five
Garlic and oil. Slice garlic thin, warm it slowly in plenty of oil until pale gold, take it off before it browns, add chilli and salt. This makes pasta, greens, beans, bread. Yoghurt and lemon. Yoghurt, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt, and any herb chopped in. Goes with anything roasted, fried or spiced. Soy, vinegar and sugar. Equal parts soy and rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, chilli or ginger if there is any. Rice, noodles, eggs, cucumber. Mustard vinaigrette. A spoon of mustard, a spoon of vinegar, three of oil, salt, shaken in a jar. It is a dressing, but it is also a sauce for warm potatoes, lentils and fish. Tomato paste, done properly. Fry a big spoonful of tomato paste in oil for two full minutes until it darkens, then loosen with water or the liquid from a tin. It tastes like it cooked for an hour.
Season at the end, taste twice
Sauces are concentrated, so they are easy to over-salt and hard to rescue. Build them under-seasoned, taste, then adjust once on the plate rather than three times in the bowl. If it tastes flat, it almost always wants acid, not more salt. Add lemon or vinegar first and taste again before reaching for the salt.
Make more than you need
All five keep for several days in the fridge, and having one already made changes what you cook. Plain food stops being a compromise when there is something good to put on it. The garlic oil and the vinaigrette keep longest. The yoghurt one is best the day it is made.
Fat, acid, salt, something loud. Learn the shape once and the cupboard turns into a sauce list — which means the rest of dinner can be as plain as you like.