Panang Curry Sauce

Alex is a writer and food finder at Zingerman's Mail Order.

I love cooking projects. Long ingredient lists, multi-page recipes, complicated techniques—sign me up! But sometimes, I find a food that makes me toss up my hands and say, nope, let's leave this one to the experts.

This Panang Curry sauce is one of those foods. It's a complex sweet, spicy, savory explosion of deliciousness, and all I have to do is open the jar, pour it over some sauteed meat or chopped veggies (it goes with literally anything that looks good at the market or is getting old in the fridge), and serve it over rice. The hardest part is deciding if there will be leftovers.