All Ingredients

Genmaicha is a green tea with roasted (popped) brown rice.

This rich cake is light, pliable, and absorbent, so it forms the basis of many desserts, including tiramisu, baked Alaska, petits fours, and upside down cakes. You probably won't find them unembellished in markets, but they're easily made at home with cake flour, butter, eggs, vanilla, sugar, and salt.

This is the exceptionally nutritious embryo found within the grain kernel. It contains oil, so it has a relatively short shelf life. Many cooks store small jars of it in the refrigerator, and use small amounts of it to fortify breads and cereals.

Use within a few days after purchasing. For best flavor, serve at room temperature.

German and domestic versions of this white wine are somewhat sweet, flowery, and relatively low in alcohol. They're very good with curry and spicy Asian food. Imports from Alsace tend to be drier and are excellent with seafood and poultry.

Gherkins are pickles made from smaller cucumbers, and tend to be crunchier than, say, dill pickles. They can be sweet or sour.

These small, bumpy greed cucumbers are used to make Gherkin pickles or, if pickled while still small, cornichon pickles.

Ghost peppers are a very hot (over 1,000,000 scovilles) hybrid between Capsicum chinese and Capsicum frutescens. It is grown and used in northern India.

This Italian specialty is made with chocolate and hazelnut paste. It's unbelievably good.

These are the bird's heart, liver, and gizzard, and usually come in a package tucked inside the abdominal cavity of a packaged whole bird.

This Italian pasta consists of flower shapes (gigli is Italian for "lilies"). It's good with heart, chunky sauces.

This is distilled from grains and similar to vodka except that it's flavored with juniper berries, herbs, peels, and spices. London gin = dry gin = English gin = London dry gin is the preferred gin for martinis and other mixed drinks. American gin is similar, but isn't quite as heavy and dry as London gin. Hollands gin = sweet gin = Dutch gin = Geneva gin = Jenever is sweeter and more aromatic than other gins and isn't normally used for mixed drinks. Don't confuse gin with sloe gin, which is sweetened.

This is a non-alcoholic, pale amber, carbonated drink. It's used in various cocktails.

Recipes for baked goods often call for ground ginger. Don't confuse this with fresh ginger root, which is used mostly in Asian dishes.

Look for this in Asian grocery stores.

Cooks use this when they want the flavor, but not the bulk, of fresh ginger.

These addictive British cookies are similar to ginger snaps, but harder. They're often crushed into crumbs for pie crusts.

With its sweet yet pungent flavor, ginger has become a mainstay of many of the world's cuisines. European cooks like to use dried, ground ginger to flavor gingerbread and other baked goods. Asian and Indian cooks prefer their ginger fresh, and they use it in spicy sauces and stir-fries. Ginger not only tastes good, it's also believed to have medicinal properties, and people sometimes use it to soothe their upset stomachs and boost their energy. Ground ginger isn't a good substitute for fresh, but dried whole ginger will work in a pinch, as will the minced or puréed ginger that's sold in jars.

These hard cookies are flavored with ginger and molasses. They're sometimes added to sauerbraten or beef stews, or they're crushed into crumbs for pie crusts. The British version of this is the ginger nut, which is similar but very hard.

These are used for pie crusts and to sprinkle on desserts. Markets occasionally carry these crumbs, but you'll probably have to buy whole gingersnaps and crush them yourself.

These nuts date back some 150 million years, and are believe to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Asian cooks like to use them in desserts and stir-fries. They're available in Asian markets either fresh (in the fall), canned, or dried. To prepare fresh nuts, crack open their shells and then pour boiling water over the nutmeats. Let them soak for about ten minutes until their skins are loose. Peel off the skins, then put the nutmeats in a pot full of boiling water, let it simmer for about thirty minutes, then drain. Canned nuts have already been shelled, skinned and boiled, but they're mealier than fresh nuts. Rinse them before using.

This tastes a bit like caramelized American cheese. It is made from a combination of goat and cow milk.

A glace is a meat or fish stock that's been cooked for many, many hours until it's thick and rich with flavor. French cooks add dollops of it to their sauces at the last minute to thicken them and boost their flavor. You can make a glace yourself or buy it ready-made, but count on paying dearly with either time or money. There are several varieties, including glace de viande (also called meat glace or meat jelly), glace de poisson (fish glace), glace de poulet (chicken glace), and glace de veau (veal glace). A demi-glace is made the same way as a glace, but it's not as thick.

red, green and yellow versions.

This Scottish liqueur is whisky-based and flavored with herbs, fruit, and honey.

You can stuff these and bake them, or slice and sauté them.

This orange cheddar-like cow's milk cheese comes from England. Varieties include Single Gloucester, which is ripened for only two months, and Double Gloucester, which is more highly regarded and flavorful. Huntsman cheese contains layers of Gloucester and Stilton.

This is flour with the starch and bran removed. Don't confuse it with bread flour (high-gluten flour), which is gluten-fortified flour, or with gluten (seitan), a meat analogue used in vegetarian dishes. Pure gluten flour is usually added to regular flour to turn it into bread flour, or it's used to make seitan.

Gluten is what makes wheat-based bread dough so sticky and elastic. This helps the dough hold in the air bubbles created by the yeast so that it will rise and eventually bake into a fluffy, porous loaf. If you're gluten-intolerant, though, you'll need to use gluten-free flour, along with an arsenal of ingredients to make it behave like it has gluten.

Despite its name, this rice isn't sweet and it doesn't contain gluten. Instead, it's a very sticky, short-grain rice that is widely used by Asians, who use it to make sushi and various desserts. You can buy this as either white or black (actually a rust color) rice.

Gnocchetti is an Italian pasta made to look like gnocchi, the popular potato dumplings. Gnocchetti, though, contains no potatoes. To confuse matters, a larger version of gnocchetti is also called gnocchi. Both sizes are good with thick sauces.

Gnocchi are Italian dumplings made from potatoes and other ingredients. They work best with light sauces, so as to showcase the pasta's subtle flavor and texture.

Goat meat is widely consumed in North Africa and the Middle East, but many Americans have never tasted it. It's quite lean, and if cooked correctly, it can be surprisingly good. As with sheep, the best meat comes from a young animal, or a baby goat = kid = capretto = cabrito. Meat from older goats is tougher, like mutton.

Goat's milk lends cheese a tangy, earthy, and sometimes barnyard flavor. Varieties include chèvre, Montrachet, Mizithra, Chaubier, Humboldt Fog, Chabichou, Banon, and Bucheron.

Don't confuse this mild fresh cheese with aged goat cheese, which is less common and more flavorful. Fresh goat cheese is like fromage blanc, only made with goat's milk. There are several varieties, including Montrachet and cabecou, which is soaked in brandy. Goat cheese is usually vacuum-packed, though many connoisseurs seek out the more perishable but tastier paper-wrapped cheeses at specialty shops.

This comes with varying percentages of butterfat. You can buy it fresh, or as powdered milk, canned evaporated milk, or UHT milk packed in aseptic containers. Fresh is best for drinking and delicate desserts, the other kinds pick up an unpleasant caramelized flavor when they're heated for packaging.

Gochujang is a spicy Korean fermented chili condiment. It is made by with chili powder, glutinous rice and soybeans. It is traditionally fermented in clay pots. Gochujang is often added to the Korean dish bibimbap.

This is a brand of chocolate liqueur.

This is Cincinnati's answer to scrapple. It's a mixture of pork, beef, and oatmeal, and it's usually fried.

This has crunchy, amber-colored eggs and makes a colorful garnish. They're often flavored with various seasonings before they're sold.

This sweet apple is good for eating out of hand, baking, and for making pies. The yellower the better.

This is an orange-red variety of Hubbard squash