Vegetables Category

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.

The flavor of this mushroom has been likened to that of lobster and crab.

These are mild Italian brine-cured black olives.

Porcini mushrooms are well appreciated in Europe for their meaty texture and interesting flavor. If you can find them fresh, pick the largest caps you can find (or afford). Just wipe them clean before using; if you wash them, they'll soak up the water like a sponge. Dried porcini are also excellent.

These are just large cremini mushrooms, and their size (about the same as a hamburger patty) makes them perfect for grilling or roasting. They're also more flavorful than younger, smaller creminis.

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.

Pumpkin leaves can be served fresh or in soups and stews.

These purple-fleshed potatoes have a medium starch content, so they're good all-purpose potatoes. They lend an interesting color to mashed potatoes or potato salads, but they're not as flavorful as other varieties. They tend to get mushy if they're over-cooked.

Hispanic cooks especially like these crunchy, mild tasting greens. You can use purslane raw in salads, or cook them as a side dish. Look for purslane in Hispanic markets.

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.

Quail grass stems, leaves and young flowers can be cooked and eaten.

With its beautiful coloring and slightly bitter flavor, radicchio is wonderful when combined with other salad greens. You can also use the leaves as a base for hors d'oeuvres, or sauté them for a side dish. The most common variety, radicchio rosso (left), is round, while the treviso radicchio is elongated.

With their crisp texture and peppery flavor, raw radishes are great in salads and on crudité platters. They can also be cut into attractive garnishes. Select firm, fresh-looking radishes and store them in your refrigerator for no more than a week.

These have a peppery flavor, and they're great raw in salads and sandwiches, or you can cook them as you would other leafy greens. The leaves are fairly pungent, though, so a little goes a long way. The greens from young plants are best.

These have a strong onion-garlic flavor which tends to linger on the breath. Despite their humble Appalachian origins, ramps tend to be pricey and are usually found in gourmet produce markets. They're available from March to June.

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

Red cabbage tastes just like green cabbage, so your choice between them depends largely on which color you prefer. One problem with red cabbage, though, is that the color tends to bleed and discolor surrounding foods. Select heavy heads of cabbage that have shiny leaves.

This has a pungent, peppery flavor that adds zip to salads. You can cook it, too.

These are sweet enough to eat raw, and they're often used to add color to salads. They're also excellent grilled or lightly cooked. Varieties include the sweet red Italian onion, Italian red onion, creole onion, and red torpedo onion.

This beautiful mushroom, unfortunately, loses its red coloring when cooked.

These waxy potatoes hold their shape after they're cooked, so they're great for making potato salads and scalloped potatoes. Don't mash them--you'll end up with a sticky, gooey mess.

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.

Though a vegetable, rhubarb is treated more like a fruit, and it's typically made into such things as pies, tarts, preserves, and wine. It's very tart, and at its best when combined with berries. Varieties includes cherry rhubarb and the more delicate strawberry rhubarb. Fresh rhubarb shows up in markets in the spring. If you can't find it fresh, frozen rhubarb is a fine substitute. Don't eat rhubarb leaves; they contain high levels of oxalic acid, a toxin.

This is more like a leak than a garlic and shouldn't be confused with rocambole garlic.

This is more commonly found in Europe than in the United States.

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.

Romaine combines good flavor and crunch, plus it has a decent shelf life in the refrigerator. It's the preferred green for Caesar salad. Green romaine is the most common variety, but you can sometimes find red romaine, which is more tender.

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.

These potatoes are high in starch and low in moisture, so they bake well and yield light, fluffy mashed potatoes. They don't hold their shape after cooking, so don't use them to make potato salads or scalloped potatoes. Don't wrap them in aluminum foil while baking them; the foil traps moisture and makes the potato mushier.

Rutabagas look like turnips, only they're a bit larger and have a yellow complexion. Use them just as you would turnips.

When cooked, salsify has the taste and texture of an artichoke heart. There are two types: white salsify (pictured at left) and the more highly regarded black salsify = scorzonera = black oyster plant = viper grass. After peeling salsify, put it into acidulated water right away to prevent it from turning brown. Canned salsify is a good substitute for fresh, but it's hard to find.

Nama wakame is Japanese for "raw seaweed." Look for bags of this heavily salted seaweed in Japanese or Korean markets.