Mama's Nuts Spicy Peanut Sauce | Chicago

On our last visit to the Logan Square farmers' market, we stocked our bags with a rainbow of produce, and one sauce to dress it: Mama's Nuts spicy peanut sauce.

The local producer of creatively flavored nuts recently debuted its first sauce, a silky, spiced peanut concoction ($5) that we've been drizzling with abandon.

Its base of roasted peanuts, soy sauce, vinegar and sesame oil gets a gently spicy, tongue-tingling jolt from Sichuan dust, the chile- and Sichuan-peppercorn-loaded powder left over from batches of Sichuan peanuts ($8). The dust's punchy flavor, along with the sauce's smooth texture, is what sets this bottle apart.

Tossing the sauce with cold noodles, slivers of cucumber and scallions is a given. Recently we swapped noodles for ribbons of zucchini, shaved with a peeler and twirled with tomatoes, cucumber and a generous handful of Thai basil flowers and leaves.

Future plans include adding minced herbs and lime juice to make salad dressing, and stirring the sauce with a squirt of hoisin for dipping satay and rice-paper rolls.

Mama's Nuts has other plans, too: iced almond-milk horchata flavored with gingersnap spices, and a gingerbread-almond butter spread, both set to debut at the farmers' market soon.

Find Mama's Nuts peanut sauce at the Logan Square farmers' market on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.