An easy way to make not-so-good food much better

Does your ramen suck? Eggs again (sigh)? Is your soup insipid? Are your vegetables dull and lifeless? Is your seafood all kind of white and meaningless? Are you a cook? No. Are you lazy? Yes. Or maybe. Or just tired.

Well, friends, step up, step up. No, it's not snakeoil. It's shoyu (soy sauce) with a bit of powdered wasabi, powdered ginger, and a bit of mirin (Japanese cooking wine) mixed in.

Put it in a jar, shake it up. That's it. Keep a jar at your place of business, another in your cupboard. It doesn't need refrigeration. But you need it.

Yay!

There are three things, of which I put at least one of into just about everything I eat: crushed red pepper, chili powder, and cilantro. I call them the three C's. The peppers can go into just about anything (soup, pasta, cheesy stuff). Chili powder is the same way (I recently discovered that it makes a wonderful additive to tuna salad). Cilantro must be given a bit more thought. I've found it goes best in soup and marinara, but just about anything with a fairly basic flavor that you'd like to give a subtle little kick is great. It's also got the coolest name of anything. Cilantro. It's just so damn fun to say! Sometimes, people will ask me what that flavor is they detect in my food, and I'll give them a huge grin and say "CILANTRO!" I would probably still use it, even if it didn't taste like mandibular ecstacy, just because of the name.

Oh, try putting cilantro and garlic powder in your salsa some time, it rocks.

I have also seen a variation of this sold from a company whose name I don't remember asCarolina Pine Tar. Strange name. Excellent sauce. They added scallions, aka green onions Also good for dipping any leftover sushi into.
Or you can just add tabasco sauce and garlic powder to whatever it is you're eating.

This sauce is great! But I have a thought…how about adding a little sesame oil to the basic sauce. It makes a really good salad dressing, or can be thrown over steamed vegetables. Sprinkle a little gomasio on it and Whaaaaa! Or as sensei says, “YAY!”

(But mine is better).

In my own expierience as a cook and a redneck, I have found that three things above all else will make nearly any meal or food item more enjoyable.

• Real Butter
• Cheese
• Fresh Herbs

These are all some excellent additions to savory dishes.

An excellent addition to any sweet fare you have is real Vanilla Sugar. Not the packaged stuff you get at the supermarket. Just place a couple of split vanilla pods into an airtight jar of white sugar. It'll take a day or so for the flavour to permiate. Leave the pods in there, and use the sugar as need be.

Subsitute this in almost any sweet recipe, sprinkle it on top of cakes and muffins before baking, or just sprinkle it on top of any crud you're eating.

With a phial of vanilla sugar, and a phial of shoyu/wasabi mixture, the decades you're sentenced to in that Turkish prison will just glide by !