The secret to good food

Is freshness, fresh herbs, fresh meat from the butcher, fresh fish from the lake or fresh fish or shrimps from the grocery store. If you want to cook high quality food for a bunch of people or yourself you absolutely must choose freshness and cut no corners. Frozen foods and dried herbs and spices can never match that of freshness, so remember when you want to kick ass DO NOT cut corners. When I was young I used to kick everyones ass in running events during track and field, if I cut across the track for a short cut I would be kicked out of the event, no different here and same goes for local produce versus shipped in produce, why choose crap thats been in the back of a truck for a week over something that has been picked from the field that day?

Agreed...freshness is key and also I have found the simplest recipes usually work the best. Some recipes call for a wide variety of concoctions and spices and invariably turn out poorly.