Once upon a time, in a life before kids, I took a short series of cooking classes with John Ash. He’s a nice guy, with a much pickier palate than mine.

I’ve retained three things from those classes, though I only practice two of them:

• If you blanch your basil for pesto, it will stay green rather than oxidizing. (I never bother.)
• You can tame raw garlic (for pesto or salad dressing or …) by blanching it in boiling water for about a minute. (This one I do bother with. Tossing individual cloves in a small sauté pan in water to cover is quick and easy and does make a difference.)
• If a dish doesn’t taste quite right, add a taste element that isn’t yet represented: sweet, salty, bitter, spicy, sour, umami.

That last one, while possibly obvious, is a trick which has saved me from a boring dish countless times. Today, it was squash soup. A simple base of sautéed onions, squash, chicken stock, a middle-eastern spice blend from a friend. This was good! But… it needed something. It had sweet, umami, and a bit of spice. I added some sherry (round and nutty, yet still counts as sour) and it was much better.

Then, of course, my 7 year old refused to even try it (though he did have several servings of salad).