All Ingredients

This is made by roasting sea salt in bamboo cylinders plugged with yellow mud. The salt absorbs minerals from the bamboo and mud, which in turn leach the salt of impurities. Look for plastic bags of it in Korean markets.

You can buy fresh shoots at some Chinese markets, but you must boil them first to rid them of hydrocyanic acid, a toxin that causes cyanide poisoning. Canned shoots are safer and more widely available. Rinse them well before using. Submerge any unused shoots in fresh water and store them in a sealed container in the refrigerator, changing the water daily.

Jamaicans love to butter these cakes and eat them with fish. Bammies are made of grated cassava, and often soaked in coconut milk before being fried.

Most of the bananas you and I have eaten in our lifetimes are the yellow Cavendish bananas. The burro banana = chunkey = chunky is shorter than the Cavendish, and has an interesting lemony flavor. The manzano banana is smaller yet and a bit drier, but it fits nicely into lunch boxes. The red banana has a purple peel and is best used for baking. The plantain is larger than other banana varieties, and is usually fried, baked, or mashed before eating. Yellow bananas with a few dark spots are ripe and ready to eat, while green ones will ripen at room temperature in just a few days. Refrigerating ripe bananas will keep them from getting softy and mushy, though the peels will darken.

These are popular in Southeast Asia and India, where they're boiled in water or coconut milk, then eaten like artichokes

Available in Asian food stores. This brownish sauce is often colored red to resemble tomato catsup.

People in the tropics use these huge leaves to line cooking pits and to wrap everything from pigs to rice. The leaves impart a subtle anise fragrance to food and protect it while it's cooking. Frozen leaves--once thawed--work just fine. Boil the leaves before using them to keep them from cracking. Look for banana leaves among the frozen foods in Asian, Hispanic, or specialty markets.

These sweet, mild peppers with a fruity flavor are easily confused with hotter yellow wax peppers. Sample before using.

This variety is so large that grocers usually cut into smaller chunks before putting it out. It's tasty, but its biggest virtue is the beautiful golden color of its flesh.

Bangers are a mild British pork sausage.

This is a red dessert wine that's produced in France. It's one of the few wines that's good with chocolate.

African cooks use leaves from the massive baobab tree to thicken their stews. Like okra, the leaves give the dish a slimy texture that's characteristic of West African stews.

This flatbread hails from Iran.

See the Kansas City BBQ Sauce recipe, Yet Another BBQ Sauce recipe, both posted by RecipeSource.com.

These usually include a spatula, tongs and a fork.

This is a hearty red wine that's usually blended into jug wines, but sometimes sold as an inexpensive varietal wine

These yellow barhi dates can be peeled and eaten fresh or dried.

Barley's been feeding humans for millennia, though it fell out of favor during the last one as people came to see it as low-brow peasant fare. It's most often used in soups and stews, where it serves as both a puffy grain and a thickener, but it also makes a nice side dish or salad. At most markets, you'll have to choose between two types of barley. Hulled barley is the most nutritious, since only the tough outer hulls are polished off. Pearl barley is polished some more, so that the outer bran layer is also scrubbed off. It's less nutritious, but more popular since it's not as chewy as hulled barley and it cooks faster.

To make this, barley kernels are sliced, then rolled flat into flakes. Like rolled oats, rolled barley is usually served as a hot cereal. It takes about 30 minutes to cook.

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

These are barley kernels that have been toasted, and then cracked into smaller pieces in order to speed up the cooking time. They're a bit hard to find.

This tastes a bit like molasses, and it's not as sweet as sugar or honey. It's mostly used to make beer, but it's also used to make breads or other baked goods.

Made from barley, it's reddish-brown in color and a bit sweeter than other dark misos.

This is a small round or oval pastry shell that's usually topped with sweet or savory fillings.

These are very juicy and great for eating out of hand. They turn yellow when ripe.

The flesh is firm and white and milder than our catfish. This Vietnamese catfish relative has a mild flavor and firm texture.

See the Basa Genep posting on RecipeSource.com.

Basil is widely used in Mediterranean countries, where it flavors everything from pasta sauces to pesto, and in Southeast Asia, where it's often stir-fried with other ingredients. There are numerous varieties, ranging from the more pungent Asian basils to the sweeter and milder European varieties. Use dried basil only in a pinch--it's not nearly as flavorful as fresh.

Look for it in Southeast Asian markets.

This aromatic, long-grain rice is grown in the foothills of the Himalayas and is especially popular in India. The cooked grains are dry and fluffy, so they make a nice bed for curries and sauces. Basmati is available as either white or brown rice. Brown basmati has more fiber and a stronger flavor, but it takes twice as long to cook. Aged basmati rice is better, but more expensive.

This Armenian specialty consists of beef that's marinated in spices and air-dried.

This is an aromatic rum that's produced in Java.

This is an orange liqueur.

The name means farmer's ham.

This is a chunky German farmer's sausage that's often grilled and served on a bun or cooked with sauerkraut.

This is a mild and creamy cow's milk German blue cheese. It's good for crumbling on salads and snacking. Paladin Bavarian Blue is a popular brand.

These are long rods, narrower than linguine but wider than spaghetti. They're best with light, delicate sauces.