Fruit Vegetables Category

This Middle Eastern cracked green olive is hard to find in the U.S.

This hard-to-find sweet pepper is smaller and sweeter than its cousin, the bell pepper, with which it's interchangeable.

This versatile cucumber is sweet and flavorful, and doesn't have much of the chemical that makes other cucumbers bitter and hard to digest. Though it's often served raw, it's also a good pickling cucumber.

These small Italian olives are brine-cured.

These green olives are brine-cured.

These are salty Italian/Swiss brownish-black olives.

This habanero relative is often used in salsas. It has black seeds. These are hot.

These green olives are available in most supermarkets. They're often pitted and stuffed with pimento or garlic. They're often put into martinis.

With their small size and shiny black skins, these look like elongated plums. You can eat them, skin and all

This is a small, black-skinned avocado that's the size and shape of a fig. Since the peel is edible, they can be eaten like a peach. There's a smaller variety, the Mexicola cocktail avocado, that's oblong and virtually seedless. They'd make a great addition to a vegetable platter.

Mirasol peppers have a distinctive fruity flavor. These are moderately hot. When dried, these are called Guajillo chiles.

These are the common black ones that are ubiquitous in supermarkets, pizza parlors, and salad bars. They don't have as much character as European black olives.

This is a smoked and dried red jalapeno pepper. It's very hot.

Like the larger mora chili, this is a smoked and dried red jalapeno. It's very hot.

These are shriveled black olives that are somewhat bitter. They're best used for cooking rather than snacking.

This very popular chili looks like the ancho, but it's darker and sweeter. It's fairly mild and has an earthy flavor.

These are green, brine-cured Greek olives. They're somewhat salty.

These large chilies are similar in size to Anaheims, but they're hotter. New Mexico green chilies peak in the late summer, while the hotter New Mexico red chilies appear in the fall. These are moderately hot.

These chilies have an earthy flavor and resemble the California chili, except they're hotter and more flavorful. They are moderately hot.

A key ingredient in Salade Niçoise, these small purplish-black olives have a distinctive sour flavor. They're great in tapenades.

These black olives from France are salt-cured, which makes them wrinkly and more bitter than standard lye-cured American black olives.

A staple of Mediterranean cuisines, olives are most often eaten out of hand, though cooks also use them to flavor everything from pizzas to martinis. Raw olives must be cured before they can be eaten, and the curing medium--usually lye, brine, or salt--affects their flavor and texture. So too does the olive's degree of ripeness when it's picked. Green olives are picked while unripe, which makes them denser and more bitter than brown or black olives, which stay on the tree until fully ripened. Olives become bitter if they're cooked too long, so always add them to hot dishes at the last minute. Opened cans or jars of olives should be refrigerated, but some olives can be stored at room temperature if they're submerged in brine or olive oil.

These are used in sauces and soups. They're hot.

This is a mild squash, similar to zucchini.

This is the dried version of the chilaca chili. It's mild, long, black, and wrinkled, and a standard ingredient in mole sauces. Ancho chilies are sometimes mislabeled as pasillas.

These have a pleasant, nutty flavor. They're small enough to grill whole, but lots of recipes call for them to be hollowed out, stuffed, and baked. There are green and yellow varieties; yellow ones are sometimes called sunburst squash.

These tiny Thai eggplants are quite bitter. They're sold in clusters and look like large green peas. You can find them fresh in Thai markets, or buy them pickled in jars.

These small red peppers are very hot.

This is very similar to a Japanese cucumber.

Picholines are green, torpedo-shaped olives that are brine-cured. Those made in Provence are marinated with coriander and herbes de Provence, while American picholines are soaked in citric acid. They make great martini olives.

Pimentos are often sold roasted and peeled in cans or jars, or used to stuff green olives.

These peel easily and their flavor is excellent. One of the best varieties.

These are insanely hot tiny peppers.

These mild, heart-shaped peppers are large and have very thick walls, which make them great for stuffing. They're best in the summer. When dried, this pepper is called an Ancho chili.

These are mild Italian brine-cured black olives.

Use the small sugar pumpkin = pie pumpkin for pies; the larger jack o'lantern pumpkin is too watery. Canned pumpkin purée is convenient and a good substitute for fresh.

This is similar to the guajillo chile, only smaller and more potent. It has a fruity flavor that's good in salsas and stews. They are fairly hot.

These are for the rare cook who's intrepid enough to cure olives from scratch. Do not eat them raw.

This large, roundish avocado slips easily from the peel, and has excellent flavor and texture. It will stay firm even when ripe, so it's not a good choice if you're making guacamole.

This is a small, sweet, mild pepper that looks like someone stepped on it. It's fruity-tasting like a habanero, only not nearly as hot.

These very hot chiles look like tiny bell peppers and have black seeds. They have an interesting fruity flavor.

This Italian heirloom eggplant has sweet, mild flesh and a creamy texture. They're hard to find, but knowing cooks scoop them up whenever they're in season.

This is large brown Greek olive is brine-cured.

This tomato isn't as juicy as other tomatoes, which gives it a more concentrated flavor that works well in sauces and stews. These are also the best tomatoes for drying. You may want to remove the bitter seeds before cooking these tomatoes, but save the gel that surrounds the seeds--it's rich in flavor. Varieties include the roma tomato = Italian tomato = Italian plum tomato and saladette tomato. Sauce tomatoes are most flavorful in the summer. During the rest of the year, many cooks prefer canned tomatoes over the bland and mealy fresh tomatoes they usually find in markets.

This is like a pattypan squash, only it's greener and rounder.

This extremely hot pepper is almost indistinguishable from the habanero, except that it's a bit smaller and has a fruitier flavor. It's popular in the Caribbean.