College Student's Flavor Aider

When you're in college, the food in the cafeteria...well, it kind of sucks. It's bland and tasteless and it needs some livening up. So in my quest for flavor, I came up with a minor solution, at least when it comes to boring sandwiches and bland burgers: a special sauce of sorts that makes campus dining almost tolerable. I liked the sauce so much that when I came home for winter break it was like something was missing from my diet (no, I don't mean the carb-rich selection for digestion). I wanted to try and mimic the sauce for home consumption. For the most part, the sauce is pretty basic. At school, it was simply a mix of Parmesan Peppercorn dressing and Franks Hot Sauce (it sounds a little gross, but is surprisingly delicious). But at home, it got a little more complicated. The ingredients didn't all line up perfectly, so it took some modification but I came up with a suitable substitute.

The first thing I did to produce the sauce at home was to make sure that we had a supply of Frank's Hot Sauce, arguably the most important ingredient because of its distinct flavor, color and spice. Next I had to find the second key ingredient, a suitable dressing. Now, I looked high and low in my local grocery store and I could not find a great parmesan peppercorn dressing that I liked, so I needed to improvise the recipe. I ended up using plain old Cardini's Caeser dressing and some ground black pepper, to taste. However, I found that to be a little thin for a sandwich spread so I added a spoonful of Hellman's Light Mayo and stirred that in with a fork until the mixture was blended completely. I should mention that I normally eyeball the ingredients for this recipe, but I would say that the ratio for the sauce is one part Frank's to two parts salad dressing, and then fresh ground black pepper and mayo to taste. I like the sauce on burgers and on turkey sandwiches, but you can eat it any way you want to.

Enjoy!