By Roger Grody

Expensive culinary academies may insist that exceptional cooking is solely the product of refined technique that takes years to master, but many chefs acknowledge that access to quality ingredients is half the challenge. With celebrity chefs spilling their secrets on the Internet, home cooks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and suburban supermarkets suddenly carry everything from caviar to summer truffles. Some ingredients, however, remain elusive and knowledge of their qualities further closes the gap between seasoned pro and ambitious amateur.

Presented herein are a sampling of underground ingredients that elevate dishes in our favorite restaurants — or at home.

Anchovy Syrup

The buzzy term umami, sometimes described as the “fifth taste” — distinct from salty, sweet, bitter and sour — has become shorthand for describing the essence of crave-worthy savoriness. One under-the-radar ingredient is packed with umami flavor despite the fact that its main ingredient rarely gets much respect. Aside from being an underrated pizza topping, anchovies contribute saturated flavor that enhances a variety of sauces (usually via a paste), and hard-to-find anchovy syrup (aka colatura di alici or anchovy extract) may be the epitome of umami.

Anchovies are often the primary ingredient in fish sauce, a product that gives innumerable Southeast Asian dishes an addictive, exotic flavor. As with balsamic vinegar, patient aging makes the anchovy syrup potent, but not astringent, thereby imbuing marinades, dressings and sauces with an alluring, complex quality. Anchovy syrups from Italy or Spain are not available in most grocery stores, but easy enough to find online.

Gochujang

Multidimensional gochujang — a blend of red chili paste, sticky rice and fermented soybeans — is becoming as commonplace as Sriracha, but its undiscovered versatility still qualifies it as a secret ingredient. And as all things Korean are currently in style, from K-pop to Squid Game, the timing could hardly be better. For an added benefit, gochujang is a secret ingredient hiding in plain view at most neighborhood supermarkets.

Celebrity chef and author Judy Joo, a frequent guest on the Food Network and shows like Today, insists the magic of gochujang transcends Korean cuisine. “It’s the zeitgeist ingredient of choice, and you’ll see it being drizzled on top of pizza, spooned into bouillabaisse and mixed into hummus,” she says. “Gochujang is full of umami and contributes such a deep complexity to dishes, you’ll want to add it to everything,” explains Joo, who recommends incorporating the ingredient into a marinade for salmon. “The gochujang caramelizes nicely and adds a gorgeous sweet-and-spicy flavor to the fish,” she states.

Fennel Pollen

Most cooks are intimately familiar with fennel, which imparts a pleasant hint of anise. Sophisticated cooks may sometimes use fennel fronds as well, which look very much like fresh dill and can provide a similar, but more subtle flavor as the fennel bulb. Referred to as “culinary fairy dust,” the pollen harvested from the plant’s yellow blossoms provides even more delicate anise-flavored notes to meats, vegetables and grains.

At her Los Angeles restaurant Playa Provisions, celebrity chef Brooke Williamson currently uses a dusting of fennel pollen to season the popcorn that garnishes a fresh sweet corn and heirloom tomato salad. “The popcorn gets seasoned with a handful of spices, including turmeric for color and a healthy dose of fennel pollen, then gets tossed over the salad as croutons would,” says Williamson. “It’s also a perfect marriage with the fresh, sweet, raw corn and tomatoes, giving the salad a very distinct herbaceousness,” adds the Top Chef champion.

Nigella Seeds

For centuries, the black seeds of the flowering Nigella sativa plant have been used in diverse cuisines, from North African to South Asian. Now being discovered by American chefs, nigella seeds are sometimes referred to as kalonji or black cumin although they are not scientifically related to cumin. At Oleana in Cambridge, Massachusetts, chef/owner Ana Sortun creates compelling menus inspired by the cuisine of Turkey, which she fell in love with as a young chef, and nigella seeds are a key ingredient in her portfolio of exotic seasonings.

The James Beard Award-winning chef incorporates nigella seeds in the brown butter sauce with walnuts that accompanies her börek, a Turkish pastry she currently rolls with zucchini. Sortun, who also uses the ingredient at Sofra, her Cambridge bakery/café, reports, “Nigella seeds don’t have much aroma, but their flavor is pleasantly sharp, nutty, peppery and slightly vegetal.” She adds, “They can be used as a topping for crackers or savory pies, stirred into jams, mixed into pancake batter, or combined with other nuts and seeds to make a spice mixture like dukkah.”

Bottarga

A dried, cured sac of fish roe, typically from grey mullet, bottarga has been an essential ingredient in Italian and other Mediterranean cuisines for millennia, and as global distribution increases, its value is becoming fully appreciated by professional chefs and home cooks in the U.S. When grated over pasta, grains or vegetables, bottarga introduces a lively new dimension to the underlying dish.

A similar ingredient is used in Asia — the Japanese produce karasumi and in Korea it is called eoran — so bottarga is hardly limited to Italian cooking, but it pairs magically with pasta. At San Francisco’s Flour+Water, the ingredient is regularly used to embellish handcrafted pastas, such as green garlic spaghetti with Manila clams, pea leaves, preserved Meyer lemon and bottarga butter. Thomas McNaughton, who serves as Flour+Water’s co-chef with Ryan Pollnow, states, “Bottarga is an amazing product that blends salinity and umami.” Pollnow adds, “It does for Italian cuisine what fish sauce does in Southeast Asian cuisines. We love making a compound butter out of it to finish seafood pastas.”

Fenugreek

As the world continues to shrink, once-exotic Indian ingredients are finding their way into American pantries, and one of the trendiest is fenugreek, a clover-like herb native to the Indian subcontinent and Mediterranean. Fresh or dried leaves have culinary uses, and the powdered form of the seeds is a frequent component of the garam masala that flavors Indian curries. And because fenugreek imparts a caramel or maple flavor, Southern barbecue masters thousands of miles from Delhi are discovering that the unconventional ingredient contributes a distinctive flavor to their dry rubs. Fenugreek is also heralded for its therapeutic qualities — there is some evidence that it can lower blood sugar or reduce inflammation — and medical researchers in the West are studying its positive effects.

Butterfly Pea Flower

Mixology is an essential part of dining, and the fancifully named butterfly pea flower is a well-kept secret behind the bar. Its use exploded when mixologists discovered how butterfly pea flower can dramatically transform the color of a cocktail without artificial ingredients. Indigenous to Asia, the blossom introduces rich blues, purples or pinks, depending on the level of acidity it comes in contact with. Experimentation with this ingredient is occurring nationwide, but Las Vegas is a natural place for anything that increases the drama quotient in a drink. Tao, the flamboyant Pacific Rim-inspired venue at The Venetian, adds butterfly pea flower to its Divinity cocktail (Grey Goose Le Citron vodka, St-Germain, pineapple and lemon) to give it a rich shade of lavender.

“With the consumer becoming more educated and the availability of content on social media, we have to ensure that we’re staying relevant,” reports Craig Schoettler, vice president of beverage at Tao Group Hospitality. He suggests butterfly pea flower is one item in his mixologists’ toolbox that really presents a “wow” factor for guests. “Not everyone has seen the magic of a cocktail changing color right in front of their eyes,” states Schoettler.

Tiger Nuts

Technically not a nut but a tuber, dried tiger nuts (aka chufa and yellow nutsedge) are the size of small olives, but with a shriveled, mummified-like skin. The ingredient provides multiple health benefits — the fiber- and antioxidant-rich superfood is purported to lower cholesterol and boost the immune system — and its catchy name and natural sweetness make these “nuts” destined to appear on trendy restaurant menus. For cocktails, horchata (a sweet non-alcoholic tiger nut beverage popular in Spain) can be mixed with tequila or other spirits.

By Roger Grody

Tacos are the ultimate street food, and college kids, frazzled moms and anybody on a budget knows they are also typically a great value. But as the tradition of “Taco Tuesday” has spread from the American Southwest through the entire nation, innovative chefs have begun incorporating luxurious or unexpected ingredients into tacos, elevating the humble dish to new heights.

Nobu Malibu, typically overrun by celebrities on weekends, features a variety of upscale tacos fashioned from wonton shells. The fashionable outpost of sushi master/entrepreneur Nobu Matsuhisa offers miniature tacos stuffed with luxury ingredients such as uni, Wagyu beef and lobster, all providing a suitable homage to the Mexican heritage of Southern California.

In New York, chef Alex Stupak — he co-authored the James Beard Award-nominated book Tacos: Recipes and Provocations — explores the versatility of the taco at his growing collection of Empellón Taquerias. In the book’s introduction, the chef characterizes the recipes for taco fillings he presents on the following pages, presenting unconventional concepts like chicken wing tacos or pastrami tacos that intrigue readers. “Some are classic, like sticky pork carnitas, musky tripe or cochinita pibil. Others use tradition as a springboard for innovation or as an opportunity to explore my own roots in a Mexican context,” he explains. Stupak’s oyster tacos are a nod to his New England heritage and his foam-topped tacos are the product of years working in trendy American kitchens.

Since it was founded in Dallas in 2011, Velvet Taco has spread like wildfire throughout Texas and to Georgia, Illinois and beyond, promoting itself as a “temple to the liberated taco.” Without the constraints of strict authenticity or national borders, its chefs have been free to create a culturally diverse taco menu that includes Southern shrimp-and-grits, Indian-inspired chicken tikka, Nashville hot tofu, Korean fried rice, chicken-and-waffle, Buffalo chicken, and an interpretation of a Cuban sandwich folded into a flour tortilla.

Chef V Willis, who directs the culinary operations at Velvet Taco, states, “The brand is founded on the idea that tacos don’t have to be Mexican, or Tex-Mex.” As a result, some purists may find Velvet Taco’s eclectic, chef-driven approach to tacos unnerving, but it resonates with adventurous diners. “When creating a menu, we’re always exploring new ingredients, flavors, seasonal trends, and cultures,” says Willis.

Noting the perfect taco is a balance of flavors, textures and colors, Willis insists there are no rules for the taco as a vessel for the delivery of diverse, even unexpected flavors. “You can put anything into a taco, and even the ingredients that go into making the tortilla can be unique and nontraditional,” she says. “Connecting people with global flavors through an approachable staple, like a taco, is important to us,” explains the chef.

At New York’s Bar Masa, from sushi master Masa Takayama, diners enjoy rich, cross-cultural tacos filled with crispy Peking duck, whose sweet hoisin sauce complements an additional indulgent filling of seared foie gras. In Miami, The Bazaar by José Andrés — a fusion of scene and cuisine in perennially trendy South Beach — offers high-end tacos, including a Japanese-influenced version with grilled eel, shiso, wasabi, and pork chicharrónes stuffed into a cucumber “tortilla.” Another taco, informed by the famous chef’s native Spain, features Ossetra caviar wrapped in prized Ibérico ham.

Chef Roy Choi was a pioneer in the food truck movement, creating addictive street food that combined the seemingly disparate ingredients he grew up with. Born in Seoul but raised in L.A., the young chef realized his two favorite cuisines, Korean and Mexican, could be harmonized in dishes like kimchi quesadillas or Korean short rib tacos. The concept has been an unbridled success, as a fleet of Choi’s instantly recognizable Kogi trucks, a local favorite since 2008, continue to rumble through the streets of Southern California. The chef, a renegade at heart despite his Culinary Institute of America credentials, was instrumental in making the taco a vehicle for anything a clever chef might imagine.

In Pleasantville, New York, veteran chef Jonathan Langsam and his Mexican-born wife Rosie Hernandez-Langsam combine Israeli and Mexican traditions at a restaurant called Falafel Taco. The menu offers appealing mashups such as potato latkes or matzo ball soup with Mexican twists, and tacos stuffed with Jewish specialties like slow cooked brisket (a riff on Langsam’s grandmother’s recipe) or Israeli falafel. The genesis of the concept was Langsam stuffing falafel into pita bread (options at the restaurant include Israeli pita, laffa or corn tortilla) at home to please his vegan-leaning children. “We thought about opening a taquería or a falafel place, and ended up doing both,” explains the chef, who adds, “Our menu is really about street food,” a grab-and-go concept well suited to the restaurant’s train station location.

“What Mexican and Israeli cuisines have in common is that everything has to be fresh, and the flavors have to intrigue and excite you,” says Langsam, who draws parallels between a finely chopped Israeli salad and Mexican pico de gallo. The curious cultural hybrid has been a hit, and the culinary couple is opening a second Falafel Taco in nearby Greenwich, Connecticut.

The Grand Velas Los Cabos resort in Mexico offers a $25,000 taco, a gold-infused corn tortilla stuffed with langoustine, Kobe beef, Beluga caviar and black truffled Brie cheese. For an extra $150,000, the gilded taco can be paired with Ley .925 “Pasión Azteca” Ultra-Premium Añejo Tequila in a custom- designed bottle accented in gold and platinum.

“Our ultimate goal at Grand Velas Los Cabos is to break the mold of expected, traditional cuisine, going outside the box and creating new, exciting experiences for our well-traveled guests,” explains Andreas Schmidt, the resort’s managing director.