I am a one-trick pony and that trick is: more zest.

Remember the end of The Usual Suspects when the cop looks around himself and sees all the little details Kevin Spacey had been weaving into his tale of Keyser Soze?  It rapidly dawns on the cop just what had been going on.

I just had a similar moment re-reading some entries on this blog.  I was looking back over some successful recipes and kept reading the same thing “I used more zest…” “I upped the zest…” 

It’s just zest. 

That’s like the one thing I got.  If a recipe calls for zest, I use more zest.   If a recipe doesn’t call for zest but seems like it could use some brightening, I whip out the Microplane.

(Precious)

When I was making the Lemony-Semolina Cookies with my friends Carolyn and Will, I brought my Microplane with me down to their house, just in case they didn’t have the best tool for the job. 

Carolyn said, off-hand, that if a recipe calls for zest, she usually just skips that ingredient, and I was aghast.  I had to save her from her own faulty thinking!  So I launched into my usual style of dorky over-enthusiastic evangelism.  She stopped me, incredulous, and asked, “Did you just actually say, ‘Zest is best’?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed, “I did!  Because it is!”

So it’s not exactly a surprise to see how often I use it as my secret weapon, but still I sort of thought I had like more than just that one in my arsenal.