I've been going for garlic and shallots lately.
In my fridge, there's nearly always a container with garlic butter and olive oil that I make, and another with chopped shallots with salt and pepper, soaking in olive oil.
I like every month or two buying a pound of onions, run em over the mandolin and spend an afternoon doing a nice slow caramelize on em. Reduce em down to a cup or so of dark brown amazingness, toss it in the fridge and add into a bunch of food just like I do roasted garlic.
Always have garlic powder and 3-6 heads of garlic in my kitchen and I am not above roasting a couple of them heads at a moments notice so I can toss roasted garlic into anything.
I'm not sure how much smell is factored into people's enjoyment of garlic, but my nose basically doesn't work (and not because of covid), maybe that's why. It's a nice to have but not that high for me. Disclaimer though, I am Asian. It's just my preference. For example, while garilic is really nice on fried food, I'd rather have them with salted egg sauce, pepper sauce, various spicy condiment etc. There are so many things to add for flavouring and I'm not particularly picky. I do know someone who's a garlic fiend though.
As for eggs, there are so many dishes here with eggs or eggs as a topping, you could have eggs in all your meal for a day and it wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary. Like, in a lot of western cultures it's probably normal to have fried eggs on their own in the morning or something. Here it's very easy to just put fried egg or crispy omelette on rice and it won't be strange. Not to mention you can put them in noodles, soup and so on.
Garlic and cilantro (or Kulantro … if your a genetic freak…) come before peppers for me.
But peppers find their way in most my cooking. I use vodka or gin (or any neutral-ish booze) to soak the peppers and extract the capsaicin. this gives you better control of the capsaicin content relative to everything else (including all the amazing flavors in the peppers themselves.)
Also makes for a moment of hilarity when your brother’s in laws are over and decide to raid your liquor cabinet for a vesper. (Which… even Ian Fleming thought was god awful)
Cilantro is interesting because to me it doesn't really taste like anything, but in a dish where I'm used to seeing it on top it just feels so wrong when it's not there.
Any kind of pork, beef, or lamb fat. Using it as a replacement for butter or oils to cook or prepare ingredients brings a whole new depth of flavor to a dish!
There are so many things I could say, but if I'm being totally honest, white rice. I could eat it plain, with butter, with so many different sauces, under other food, mixed into other food, at any meal, as a snack, even multiple times a day. I never get tired of it.
These days it’s probably turmeric, even though that isn’t very exciting. I’m having trouble thinking of a dish I wouldn’t put it in under any circumstances.
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