The Secret Ingredient

At the headquarters of my corporate masters (no, Virginia, blogging about condiments is not a cash cow), there is a cafeteria which gets a B- on condiments. Standard oil and vinegar offered at the salad bar, but also balsamic vinegar (it's the new black) and olive oil vs. your standard vegetable oil. They only offer tabasco in little plastic packets, not by the bottle anymore.

This trend towards little plastic packets vs. the full bottle is disturbing to me. An indication of the general trend in our society towards insular living, holed up with our plastic media devices spewing light rays in high definition at us (of course, I type this sitting at said same object) vs. being out in the giant bottle of humanity.

Anyway, I usually get a salad, but this day they offered a tantalizing pulled pork mojito wrap with an Orange Chile sauce. The sauces are usually fine, but on this day, as I watched the nice woman behind the counter steaming up the tortilla, I noticed that the bowl containing the sauce for the wrap looked awfully homemade. So I inquired about its origin. Turns out, this lovely woman working in a corporate cafe which would bring me to my knees and/or a morphine habit in about 2 minutes, made the sauce herself. I was a tad surprised - I thought all these things came out of a bottle.

She gave me a taste and I tried to discern all the ingredients. I really, really wish I was better at this. I always wanted to be one of those people who take a sip of wine, then reel out "clearly contained in an oak barrel made of oaks from the northwest region of California, probably the small forest outside the town of Booneville, a man wearing boots that had tracked through blackberries walked over the dirt where the grapes grew, and a plane route flying a load of Florida citrus on a regular run flew over the vineyard twice a day, except on Sunday...."

I managed to guess olive oil. And that was it. It turns out she reduced orange juice (which I didn't know you could do), added Chipotle peppers, paprika for color, and the secret ingredient? She gave me a sly smile..."Dijon mustard."

I didn't guess it. I should have turned in my condiment grrl badge (Man, a condiment badge would have kept me in the girl scouts, but noooooooo, only stupid things like knots).

There was this crazy energy around the revelation of the secret ingredient. The furtive joy in knowing something only you know. Like having a secret crush, knowing that you see one additional thing in someone that no one else sees, that turns somebody you know into somebody special. We all have a secret ingredient. What's yours?

Condiment Grrl