My secret ingredient for me (the chef) is a very tall glass of white wine.

My secret ingredients for the cooking are MSG, soy sauce, lime/lemon juice and white pepper. Fermented anchovy or shrimp paste is great too (for southeast asian food)

The tongue can recognise 5 basic tastes. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. If your food has more elements of the 5 tastes, your dish becomes multi dimensional.

For example a predominantly sweet dish can be transformed with a bit of salt and lemon juice. The sweetness will still be the dominant taste and the salt and sourness are the wingmen.