The Secret Ingredient

There’s a running gag in our production of Puss in Boots (written by Stevo) that always delights the audiences. The special stew that Puss the Cat serves the King so that his master can win the princess's hand, contains a secret ingredient: “honey-coated, licorice-flavored beef jerky sticks.”

Our young audiences may roar with laughter, but for me, I fail to see the humor. Because I have a reputation for seeking out some pretty unusual seasonings for my own dishes. Mind you, I don’t invent these concoctions (I remain pretty recipe-bound, even after all these years). But when I peruse cookbooks or culinary websites or blogs, I MAY decide to make a Mexican street corn salad, but I DEFINITELY will whip up the version that calls for tajin (a lime-spice blend). This will, of course, necessitate ordering a bottle of the stuff which, after its maiden voyage, will languish in the back of the cabinet for years past its use-by date. The same fate has befallen everything from tamarind paste to wood-ear mushrooms to galangal (which I think is an unusual Thai seasoning…it’s so old now that I’m afraid to open the container). 

This weird predilection goes way back. As a young child, I would avidly read my Nana Cunningham’s Gourmet magazines, and my Grandma Berrigan’s old recipe books. Neither of these wonderful women were fancy cooks (in Nana’s case, she wasn’t even an OK cook), so I don’t know why these publications found their way into their homes. But I would scan the instructions for roast wild boar and candied violets (not in the same dish!) and daydream about serving these items to cheers from the assembled diners in my imaginary dwelling some future day. 

Practically speaking, I have no business shelling out so much moolah for stuff that most dishes could easily do without—especially when the stuff has such limited usefulness. Rose recently made preserved lemons for an appetizer recipe, which turned out wonderfully—but left her with a large amount of extra lemons. She asked me if I had any ideas about what to do with them, so I typed “recipes using preserved lemon” into the old Google search bar. Wonder of wonders! There are, if not a ton, at least SOME other dishes where one is encouraged to toss in a P.L.!

This successful foray was a lightbulb moment for me: I too can Google oddball ingredients I’ve bought! I too can discover other ways to use them up before they expire! It’s been a seismic shift in my thinking. Now, before ordering achote powder or naranja agria (sour orange juice) to add to my bulging pantry, I go through said pantry first. I pull out, say, the ras el hanout. Can I marinate chicken in this? Stir it into biscuit dough? Maybe!

Looking forward to world travels with all the money I’ll be saving. I’ll surely bring home suitcases full of local specialties (maybe even honey-coated licorice-flavored beef jerky sticks). 

Old habits die hard.