Grain Products Category

A Korean specialty, these long, chewy noodles are made with sweet potato starch. Before using, soak them in hot water for about 10 minutes, then add them along with some broth to stir-fries.

Jewish cooks use these to make kreplach, a kind of Jewish ravioli.

This thickener is made from the tuber of the kudzu, the obnoxious vine that was imported from Japan a number of years ago and is now growing out of control all over the South. It's very expensive, and the main reason to buy it is for its reputed medicinal benefits. It comes in small chunks. To thicken a liquid, crush the chunks into a powder, mix them with an equal amount of cold water, then stir the mixture into the hot liquid and simmer for a few minutes until the sauce is thickened. Look for kudzu in health food stores.

This is a kind of Italian ribbon pasta, similar to lasagne only narrower.

These rice noodles look like white spaghetti. They're used to make laksa, a noodle dish popular in Indonesia and Malaysia. Don't confuse the noodles with laksa leaves, a kind of mint that's often used to season the noodles.

These thick, wide noodles with ruffled edges are used to make an Italian casserole dish that Americans call lasagne. Italians call the noodle itself lasagna (plural: lasagne), and the casserole lasagne al forno. Thinner noodles are best. Precooked lasagne = oven-ready lasagne = no-boil lasagne work fairly well and save time, but the noodles tend to absorb moisture from the sauce, resulting in a drier product.

This is a thin version of lasagne, the wide Italian noodles used to make baked lasagne. Lasagnette is often used like fettuccine, and simply tossed with a light sauce and served.

Linguine ("little tongues" in Italian) consists of long, slender ribbons of pasta. It's often served with clams or shrimp.

These popular Chinese egg noodles are often used to make lo mein, in which the noodles are stir-fried along with the other ingredients. They come in various sizes; use the flat ones for stir-fries and the round ones for soups. They're available fresh, dried, and frozen in Asian markets.

These leaves open up like butterfly wings, each about two feet high. They're often wrapped around rice and other fillings, to which they impart an earthy aroma when the bundles are steamed. The leaves are available either fresh or, more commonly, dried in Asian markets. Soak them for at least an hour in warm water before using, and keep fresh leaves in a cool, dry place or else freeze them.

Slices of the lotus root have a beautiful pattern. The fresh version is available sporadically; if not, the canned version is almost as good. Rinse and drain before using. Look for it in Asian markets.

Lumache (Italian for "snails") are shells that are often served with chunky sauces. A larger shell, called lumaconi, is usually stuffed and baked.

This is an outsized version of the Italian pasta shape called lumache, which resembles a snail shells. Lumaconi are usually stuffed and baked.

These thin wrappers are used to make lumpias, a Filipino type of egg roll.

This tubular Italian pasta used to be made by wrapping pasta dough around knitting needles. The term now refers to any small tubular pasta, all of which go well with chunky sauces or in pasta salads. Elbow macaroni is curved, and is traditionally used to make macaroni and cheese.

This is a long, tubular pasta. It's good with heavy sauces or in casseroles.

These are flat, rectangular noodles with ruffles along both edges. The singular form is mafalda. Includes mafaldine (pictured at left).

This is a short, tubular variety of pasta.

These leaves have been used to wrap meat for flavor and to tenderize while cooking.

Malaysians are fond of yellow Hokkien noodles and white laksa noodles, which they use in soups. Malaysians also use rice vermicelli (which they call beenhoon), medium rice sticks (kway teow), beans threads (tanghoon), and Chinese wheat noodles.

Malfatti means "poorly made" in Italian, and cooks use the term for broken or irregular scraps of pasta, or for a ravioli filling without the pasta covering.

This Sardinian pasta is very similar to gnocchetti, except that it's often flavored with saffron.

Maltagliati means "poorly cut" in Italian, and the name is used for various kinds of pasta scraps.

Manicotti means "little sleeves" in Italian. These large, ridged tubes of Italian pasta are usually stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach and then baked.

A Turkish specialty, manti are small squares of pasta stuffed with a ground meat filling. They're often served with a garlic and yogurt sauce.

Margherite means "daisies" in Italian, but this pasta shape looks more like shells, with ridges on the outside. A small soup pasta version is called margheritine.

This is a dough made from ground hominy that's widely used in Mexico to make tortillas and tamales. There are two kinds: The softer masa molida is used to make tortillas, while the coarser and thicker masa preparada is for tamales. Hispanic markets often sell ready-made masa in the refrigerated section, but you can easily make your own if you have masa flour.

This is flour made from hominy, and it's used to make corn tortillas and tamales. Look for it in large supermarkets or Hispanic markets. It's made with either yellow or white corn; harinilla is made with blue corn.

Matzo balls are dumplings made from matzo meal, chicken fat, and eggs. They're often cooked in water, and then served in chicken soup. You can easily make them from scratch, or buy them in cans. The plural of knaidel is spelled either knaidlech, knaidlach, or kneidlach.

These rice noodles are especially popular in Southeast Asia. They come in different widths; the thinner ones are best for soups, the wider ones for stir-fries. Before using, rice sticks should be soaked in hot water until they're soft and transparent. They can then be used in soups, or add along with some broth to stir-fries.

This is a type of tubular Italian pasta that's short and curved.

Mezzelune ("half moon" in Italian) is an Italian stuffed pasta formed into a semicircle. It's usually stuffed with cheese, vegetable, and/or meat.

These are Vietnamese wheat noodles.

To see how to substitute other flours for wheat flours when making yeast breads, see the listing under all-purpose flour.

These Filipino wheat noodles are very slender. The dried noodles can be deep-fried to make a crunchy nest, or boiled for 2-3 minutes to make a salad, or added directly to soup.

These "little mustaches" are tubes of Italian pasta cut on the diagonal.

This unusual variety of Italian pasta consists of poorly wrapped straws of dough, about 8 inches long.

Indian cooks use this to make breads and dumplings.

Nut flours are ground from the cake that remains after oils are pressed from nuts. They're great for breading fish or chicken, and they add a rich flavor to baked goods. Nut flour lacks the gluten that baked goods need to rise, so in those recipes substitute no more than 1/4 of the wheat flour with nut flour. Nut flours go stale quickly, so store them in the refrigerator or freezer, and use them up quickly.

Nut meals are ground from whole nuts, and are grittier and oilier than nut flours, which are ground from the cake that remains after the oils are pressed from nuts. To make your own nut meals, grind toasted nuts in a nut mill until the meal has the consistency of cornmeal. You can also use a food processor fitted with a steel blade to do this, but it's hard to keep the nut meal from turning into nut butter. It helps to freeze the nuts before grinding, to use the pulse setting on the processor, and to add any sugar in the recipe to the nuts to help absorb the oils. Store nut meals in the refrigerator or freezer, and use them soon after you buy or make them.

To see how to substitute other flours for wheat flours when making yeast breads, see the listing under all-purpose flour.

These "little ears" are pieces of Italian pasta shaped like tiny ears or bowls.

This pasta is shaped like grains of barley. It's often used as a bed for sauces or in soups.

These large pasta tubes are about an inch in diameter. They collapse after they're cooked, trapping sauces within.

These dried yellow Filipino noodles are used to make a dish called pancit. They're made with wheat flour, coconut oil, and yellow food coloring.

This is a type of Italian pasta that consists of 2-inch squares of pasta that are stuffed and folded into a triangular shape. The edges are either straight or ruffled.

Wrapping meats in these leaves helps tenderize them.

Pappardelle noodles are flat ribbons of Italian pasta, sold either dried or fresh. They're normally served with hearty sauces. These are often made with eggs, and so might not work in a vegan diet.