Becoming a short-order saucier is a wise addition to your bag of time-saving culinary tricks. Some of today's top chefs show how a strategic blend of multiple sauces is a sneaky way to amp up the gourmet quotient of everything from quick daily dinners to easy entertaining.

"Ingenious" is a word often attached to chef Josef Centeno of Lot 1 restaurant in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, as his name is being splashed across the pages of gourmet magazines and buzzed about by food critics. His signature dish that's creating the stir: a four-sauce-topped sandwich that takes just minutes to prepare.

Centeno trademarked the "baco" before moving to the new Lot 1. It's filled with either pork, chicken, lamb sausage or fried tuna and has been likened to a cross of a gyro, folded slice of pizza and a taco, but it's the sauce combinations that have gotten the most notice for this dish that started out not in the front of the house at a restaurant, but in the kitchen as a quick, fun meal Centeno - who has cooked at some of New York's top restaurants - made for the staff.

Sauces include ancho-pomegranate, garlic-chive, pickled red onion and almond-chile-tomato. All take just moments to blend. Centeno refers to this splashing of various sauces on a dish as a "sauce system" in which various flavors and textures build upon each other and transform from just OK to something truly interesting.

The easy system, although rarely put into play by the home chef, is a spreading secret of chefs worldwide. Darina Allen is often named Ireland's top chef. She's the founder of an acclaimed cooking school, TV cooking star and best-selling cookbook author. Her resume, though, is more complicated than her simple sauce system. She marries fresh flavors, such as fresh mint and apples in a tart chutney that's then paired with a sweeter sauce of fresh red currants and topped off with a savory sauteed onion sauce for an extremely memorable accompaniment to various lamb or pork dishes.

If you don't believe that even minor variations between your liquid ingredients can make a big difference in resulting flavor, look no further than a 100-year-old Maine recipe. Morrison's Maine Course has sold famous stews and chowders throughout the state for decades and now online, too, at www.morrisonsmaine.com. Most famous is their lobster stew. However, it's not even the full claw that's in each eight-ounce serving that gets the most notice, but instead the depth of flavor in the broth that emerges from what owner/master chef Don Morrison calls their secret weapon: using not only whole milk, but heavy cream and evaporated sweet milk as well.

Such strategies are simple additions to any of your recipes. If you want to start with tiny baby steps, turn to the ever-growing number of jarred sauces in your supermarket's aisles. Instead of just plopping one jar into a container in the microwave, consider using the "sauce system" and having not only that, but two or more with varying compatible flavors and textures (like an aioli, pesto or chutney) accompany what will become your highly memorable meal.

Here is Allen's sauce trio for the next time you have a lamb or pork dish:

FRESH MINT CHUTNEY

Handful of fresh mint

4 tablespoons minced onions

2 to 3 tablespoons sugar

1 large cooking apple, such as Jonathan, Gravenstein or Jonagold, peeled, cored and coarsely chopped

Pinch of salt

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Yields 4 to 6 servings.

Process mint, onions and sugar in food processor to a paste, add apple, pulse once or twice only, then season with a pinch of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper. It should look like a thick, chunky jam.

RED CURRANT SAUCE

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

3/4 cup fresh or frozen red currant

Yields 4 to 6 servings.

In saucepan over medium heat, combine sugar and water, stirring until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and add currants.

Boil, uncovered, 4 or 5 minutes, until currants burst. Serve hot or cold.

ONION SAUCE

1/2 stick unsalted butter

3 pounds (3 to 4 large) yellow onions, finely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups milk

Yields 4 to 6 servings.

Melt butter in saucepan over low heat, add onions and cook, covered, until very soft, but not browned, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper. Stir in flour and add milk, bring to a simmer and simmer gently, stirring, 5 minutes longer, until sauce looks like thick salsa.

- Recipes from "The Best Barbecue on Earth: Grilling Across 6 Continents and 25 Countries, with 170 Recipes" by Rick Browne (Ten Speed, $22.95).

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Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." She also writes the Copley News Service "Cooks' Books" column.

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