Sauces... A few you should know

I got side-tracked reading the daily NY Times Dining & Wine section while I was drinking my morning coffee, so I decided to hold off on the breakfast. I'm making Steak Diane for lunch because it's quick and easy, and it has reminded me of something really important about what I think is essential for people to know about cooking: Sauces make your life easy and delicious. If you know how to make a few sauces, you can cook almost anything (vegetables, meat, fish, etc.) and make it more delicious by adding your choice of sauce. Here are a few of my favorites:

- Steak Diane pan sauce --> Onions, mushrooms, garlic, worcestershire, butter, dijon mustard, cognac, cream.

- Tikka Masala --> Onions, chili (your choice of spicy), ginger, garlic, chili powder, turmeric, garam masala, sugar, tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, mild yogurt

- Classic white --> butter, flower, milk... then add cheese if you want to make it really good

- Classic red --> onions, carrots, celery, tomato puree, crushed tomatoes, garlic, and really anything else you want... add some cream or yogurt to give it a little more richness... add some red wine if you want to make it bolder.

- White wine --> onions/mushrooms, butter, garlic, white wine, chicken stock

There are more, but I could make these 5 sauces different days of the week for every week of my life. Change them, add other things, omit other things, try different wines, different cheeses, different cook times, whatever. Put them on different meats, pastas, seafoods, vegetables, sandwiches, whatever. Always make sure you have a hunky basket of bread too because the best part of the meal will be after you're done and you use the bread to clean your plate of the sauce.