Flavorings Category

The leaves and small blue flowers of this plant are used as a garnish or to impart a mild, slightly bitter flavor to salads, soups, and liqueurs. Don't waste your time drying the leaves--they'll lose almost all of their flavor.

Dried leaves are very good substitutes for fresh. Don't confuse these with Indonesian bay leaves.

This is used by commercial bakers to keep baked goods moist or by candy makers to make more finely grained candies. Look for it in candy making supply shops.

This is a variety of table salt. Iodized salt, which contains the flavorless additive potassium iodide to prevent goiter (an enlargement of the thyroid gland)

This is the best parsley to use for cooking--it has more flavor than the more common curly parsley. Avoid dried parsley; it has very little flavor.

Jackfruits are immense and some contain hundreds of nutritious seeds, which resemble chestnuts. Before eating the seeds, boil them for about five minutes, then roast them.

This is a tan, unrefined sugar that is common in India. It's made from the sap of palm trees or sugar cane and is much more flavorful than granulated sugar. It's often sold in solid cakes, but it should crumble when you squeeze it. Look for it in Indian markets.

These are small colored rods used to decorate cakes and cookies.

This is a grape variety that produces a fragrant, fresh-tasting white wine that's great with ham, sausages, smoked fish, shellfish, or spicy Asian food. It's the grape that's used to make excellent Rhine wines in Germany. Don't confuse these excellent wines with domestic Riesling wines, which are usually made with inferior cousins of the Johanissberg Riesling grape. Late harvest Johannisberg Rieslings are very sweet, and make excellent dessert wines.

This dark blue spice is used to make gin, and to flavor game and sauerkraut. Crush the berries before using.

This is an Indonesian peanut sauce.

A kaffir lime leaf look as if two glossy, dark green leaves were joined together end to end, forming a figure-eight pattern. Most Thai recipes count each double leaf as two separate leaves. Frozen kaffir lime leaves are a good substitute for fresh. Dried leaves are much less flavorful, so use twice as many as the recipe calls for if you're substituting them for fresh leaves.

This mild Kashmiri chili powder is used in Indian cooking to add flavor and color.

This thick, dark sauce is the Indonesian ancester of ketchup. Look for it in Indonesian markets.

Ketchup is a common condiment especially in America. It is made with tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and spices.

This concentrated oil is made from male pandanus (screwpine) flowers, and it's used to flavor meats, desserts, and beverages in India and Southeast Asia. Look for tiny bottles of it in Indian and Asian markets. Don't confuse it with kewra water, which isn't nearly as potent

This is an extract that's distilled from pandanus flowers, and used to flavor meats, drinks, and desserts in India and Southeast Asia. Some brands of kewra water are artificially flavored, so check the label.

Freshly squeezed lime juice is vastly superior to what you'll find in bottles. Key limes and bottled key lime juice are widely available in the Southeast, and in specialty markets elsewhere. Liquor stores sometimes carry Rose's lime juice, which is sweetened key lime juice.

Khmeli suneli is a traditional Georgian spice mix. It usually contains some combination of coriander, basil, celery seed, parsley, fenugreek, summer savory, mint, bay leaves, dill, cloves and parsley. Khmeli suneli is used to flavor sauces and stews.

Indians use this to make desserts and drinks.

This colorless cherry brandy is made primarily in Germany. French kirsch isn't quite as dry.

This salt was developed for the preparation of kosher meats, but many cooks prefer it over table salt. It has coarser grains, so it's easier to use if you, like professional chefs, toss salt into pots with your fingers, measuring by touch. Most kosher salt is also flaked, giving each grain a larger surface area. This helps the salt adhere better, so it's great for lining margarita glasses, and for making a salt crust on meats or fish. Kosher salt also is preferred over table salt for canning and pickling. Like pickling salt, kosher salt is free of iodine, which can react adversely with certain foods. Some brands of kosher salt contain yellow prussiate of soda, an anti-caking agent, but unlike the anti-caking additive in table salt, it doesn't cloud pickling liquids. The only drawback to using kosher salt for pickling or canning is that the grains are coarser and flakier, and can't be packed as tightly into a measuring cup as pickling salt. This raises the risk that the salt won't be properly measured. To get around this problem, measure by weight instead of volume. With its large grains, kosher salt isn't a good choice for baking. Look for boxes of it in the spice section of your supermarket.

This is wine that's been made in accordance with Rabbinical law. Most people think of them as syrupy-sweet screw-top wines made with Concord grapes, but some kosher wines are now being produced that are indistinguishable from quality non-kosher wines. Unless pasteurized, a wine can only remain kosher if it's poured by an observant Jew. Bottles of pasteurized wine sport the label "mevushal."

This African herb is a powder made from the leaves of a baobab trees.

These are used as meat wrappers in Vietnam.

Vietnamese sprinkle this herb on their laksa soups. It has a strong, minty, peppery flavor. It's sold in bunches with lots of pointy leaves on each stem.

These pricey wines are produced from grapes that are picked late in the season, after they've shriveled a bit on the vine. This concentrates the sugar and allows producers to turn the grapes into sweet, rich dessert wines. Some of the best late harvest wines are made from grapes that have become moldy with the Botrytis cinerea fungus (also known as "noble rot"). The fungus pokes holes in the grape skins, allowing more water to evaporate. Ice wine = icewine = eiswein is an especially sweet and expensive kind of late harvest wine in which the dehydrated grapes are allowed to freeze on the vine, resulting in a very sweet wine. These and other late harvest wines are often sold in half-bottles, and are best drunk by themselves or with fruit or light desserts. Don't serve them with chocolate or very sweet desserts.

Cooks use this herb in teas, salads, jams, and soups. The fresh leaves also make an attractive garnish.

This has a lemony flavor, and small, pointed, fuzzy leaves. Thai cooks toss it into soups, salads, and noodle dishes.

This is often used in cakes, muffins, frostings, and pies. To make your own: Chop the zest from one or two lemons and put it into a small, clean jar until the jar is 1/3 full. Fill the jar with vodka, making sure that the zest is completely immersed. Seal it with a tight-fitting lid, allow the mixture to steep for two weeks, then strain out the zest using cheesecloth or a coffee filter. The result won't be as strong as commercial extracts.

Freshly squeezed lemon juice tastes much better than bottled juice.

This is made by boiling the fruit and peel of lemons with sugar, pectin, and water. It manages to be bitter, sour, and sweet all at once, which many people find delightful.