Cayenne pepper. For the last few years, I put it on damn near everything. I don't know what it is about the stuff. How it started was, my daughter always wanted to eat food off of my own plate, and when she was around 2, that meant slobbering all over my food and putting her hands on it. So I started putting cayenne on everything, because she hated anything spicy. And it just stuck. Anything Italian--cayenne pepper. Anything with a sauce, cayenne again. Making a sandwich? Well, hell yes! Cayenne on that too. About the only thing I don't put in on is ice cream.

zom-zom wrote:Heat. It does wonders.

Zom, I would go with Food, but hey, heat is a damn close 2nd...

Kosher salt or Tabasco.

Ach! You guys just reminded me:



I put that on almost everything that I eat, even if it's not used in the actual cooking.

I love the taste of dried oregano and shake it all over pizza, pasta (of course), chicken, fish, beef, stir-fried veggies, mashed potatoes, on scrambled eggs with fresh mozzarella, even in chili.

Unfortunately, I never had much garlic until I was almost out of high school. My father (of German descent) hated it with a passion, and if my mother (of Swedish descent, but loved garlic) even put a trace amount of it in something, he could taste it. This was just powder--I never saw a garlic clove in the house during my entire childhood. The upside of this was that I also was never forced to eat liver, since the old man hated that too, having had to eat it every week when he was a kid.

unsaved wrote:The upside of this was that I also was never forced to eat liver, since the old man hated that too, having had to eat it every week when he was a kid.

My dad loved liver.

He had a stroke at age 50.

Spanish smoked paprika seems to end up on/in everything I cook.

yaledelay wrote:

zom-zom wrote:Heat. It does wonders.

Zom, I would go with Food

Not everyone agrees.

I have been on a month long Thai food bender and have been using unholy and perhaps unhealthy? amounts of coconut milk...I buy the light variety at the trader joes or at the asian supermarket in south philly. Thai reminds me so much of mexican food in so much as it seems to be the same ten ingredients reconfigured to make a different meal.

Sea Salt
Butter/Olive Oil
Onions
Garlic
Paprika or Cayenne
Wine or vinegar
Love