All Ingredients

Indians like to serve this bland fresh cow or buffalo milk cheese with spinach or peas. Use within a few days.

This large, dome-shaped Italian coffee cake is traditionally offered as a gift during the Christmas season. The cake is slightly sweet, and contains raisins, nuts, and candied fruits. Many Italian markets carry them year round, often packed in pretty boxes.

Panko breadcrumbs have a coarser texture than ordinary breadcrumbs, and they make for a much lighter and crunchier casserole topping and coating for deep-fried foods. They're especially good for breading seafood. Tan-colored panko is made from the whole loaf, white panko from bread with the crusts cut off. Look for both kinds in the Asian foods section of larger supermarkets.

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.

This Mexican herb is similar to cilantro. It's often added raw to tacos, sandwiches, salads, and guacamole. It doesn't handle heat well, so add it to cooked dishes at the last minute.

With their subtle tropical flavor, papayas are wonderful in fruit salads, puréed fruit drinks, or even shish kabobs. They're also good for you and easy to peel and seed. Papayas from Hawaii are more common and more flavorful than those from Mexico. Yellow ones that yield to gentle pressure are ready to eat, and should be refrigerated. Green ones will ripen at room temperature in just a few days.

Wrapping meats in these leaves helps tenderize them.

These tortilla-shaped Indian crackers are made with chickpea or lentil flour. Before you serve them, you need to fry them in very hot oil or heat them in a microwave oven until they puff up and become crisp. You can then break them up and serve them with curried dishes, or use them like tortilla chips. They're sold in Indian markets.

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.

Paprika is made from special kinds of sweet red peppers, which are dried and ground. Varieties include the highly regarded and sweet Hungarian paprika = rose paprika = sweet paprika = Hungarian pepper and the cheaper and more pungent Spanish paprika = Spanish pepper = pimentón = pimenton. Cookbooks that call for paprika are usually referring to Hungarian paprika.

Paradise nuts are in a large (10") capped pot-like fruit contains nutritious nuts.

Canners sometimes use this wax to seal jars, but it's hard to get a tight seal. It's safer and easier to use two-piece canning lids. Many grocers apply wax to fruits and vegetables to hold in moisture and make them shiny. Candy-makers sometimes use wax in their chocolates so that they hold up better in warm weather.

This flaky Indian flatbread is made like puff pastry, in that the dough is repeatedly rolled flat, brushed with clarified butter, folded, and then rolled again. When fried, the bread becomes light and flaky. It's served with kebabs and stews, or stuffed with various fillings.

This is a heavy, silicone-coated paper that's used to line pans so that candies and baked goods won't stick. It's an expensive alternative to waxed paper, but it's less sticky, so it's a good choice if you're making gooey items. Parchment paper is also wrapped around foods to be cooked en papillote, or formed into cones for cake decorating. Specialty cooking stores and larger supermarkets often carry rolls or sheets of it. Paper grocery bags are sometimes recommended as a substitute for parchment paper, but it's not advisable to use them. Grocery bags will ignite at 450 degrees, and that they may have been treated with unsafe chemicals.

Cake decorators use these along with decorating tips to make decorating bags.

The name means "perfect love" in French, and this sweet purple liqueur is flavored with citrus and spices.

This firm cow's milk cheese is pungent, nutty, and salty, and it's terrific grated on salads, pasta, or pizzas, or served simply with figs, pears, or crusty bread. The best parmesan is the Northern Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano, but less pricy domestic parmesans are also well regarded. Aging increases the price and flavor.

This tropical fish is delicious, but environmentalists worry that overfishing will harm coral reefs, since parrotfish clean them of algae. In addition, parrotfish also convert dead coral into white sand (up to 220 pounds of sand per fish per year) that we all love to walk and play volleyball on. As with all reef fish, parrotfish also contain a toxin called ciguatera, which can cause food poisoning. You can reduce the risk by not eating the fish's head or organs.

Parsley is prized both for its looks and for its fresh, grassy flavor. There are two common varieties: the mild curly parsley and the more flavorful Italian parsley. Use curly parsley if you want looks and Italian parsley if you want flavor. Parsley doesn't hold up well to cooking, so add it to cooked dishes at the very last minute. Frozen parsley is a good substitute for fresh, but dried parsley adds only color.

This is hard to find in the United States, but it's a popular root vegetable in Central Europe. For more information, see the Wegman's Food Market's page on Parsley Root.

These are like carrots, except that they're cream-colored and never served raw. Northern Europeans like to add them to stews, but they can also be puréed or served as a side dish. Choose small, crisp ones.

These small, plump birds are related to pheasants, and very tasty. Varieties include the chukar, red-legged partridge = French partridge, and grey partridge = English partridge.

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.

This nutritious, aromatic fruit has a tart, sweet flavor. The sweet purple variety is the most common, but you can also find yellow passion fruit (sometimes called golden passion fruit), which is more acidic, and a giant version that has a more subtle flavor. Choose fruit that have wrinkled skins (indicating that they're ripe) and heavy for their size. To eat one, cut it in half and scoop out the pulp. You can eat the small seeds, but some people remove them.

La Grande Passion is a well-regarded brand.

This page shows substitutions for pasta in general. For information about how to select, cook, and store pasta, along a list of different varieties, click here.

This means "pasta on a stick" in Italian, and this tubular pasta was originally made by wrapping dough around knitting needles.

This term refers to dried pasta that's too big to be used in soups.

These cheeses are stretched and pulled like taffy before being molded, which gives them a springy, elastic consistency. It is made from cow or buffalo milk. Unlike many cheeses, they stand up well to cooking. This category includes mozzarella, Provolone, Scamorza, string cheese, and Caciocavallo.

Ribbons of pasta are usually available either fresh or dried. Use fresh ribbon pasta for light, delicate sauces and dried for the rich, heavier ones.

Long strands of pasta are challenging to eat, and that's part of their charm. Medium-sized rods like spaghetti are normally served with light tomato-based sauces. Thin rods like angel hair pasta and vermicelli work best in broths or with thin sauces, while thicker rods like perciatelli go well with heavier, chunkier sauces. Rods are best if they're served immediately after being cooked. If you're planning to serve a lot of people, consider using small pasta tubes or shapes.

Use this sheet of fresh pasta in place of lasagna, or to make your own stuffed pasta. You can sometimes buy it where fresh pasta is made in-house.

With their thick walls, tubular pasta like penne and macaroni are ideal for pasta salads, thick sauces, and casseroles. Long tubes like perciatelli are often served with sauces, or they're broken up and used in soups. Large, wide tubes like cannelloni and manicotti are stuffed and baked. Tubes with grooves on the exterior, denoted by the Italian adjective "rigati" or "rigate" after the pasta's name, do a better job of holding sauces. Smooth-walled pasta is called "lisci" or "lisce."

Look for this in deli counters and in holiday gift packs. This cheese is a blend of fresh and aged cheeses, and it's pasteurized to stop the ripening process. This improves shelf life but impairs flavor. Nuts, fruits, and other seasoning are often added.

This cheese is similar to pasteurized process cheese, but it contains more milk solids and water. Velveeta is a popular brand.

This cheese is similar to pasteurized process cheese, but it's moister. Cheez Whiz is a popular brand.

This is a licorice-flavored liqueur that the French like to serve with water. It's higher in alcohol than anis or anisette. Popular brands include Pernod and Ricard.

This is beef brisket that's been seasoned and dry-cured. It's often served hot on rye bread.

Look for this in health food stores and specialty shops.

Leave it to the French to come up with this buttery rich delicacy. Goose pâté is pricier and more subtle than duck pâté, and is the best choice if you plan to serve the pâté cold. Duck pâté works best in warm dishes. Some people refuse to eat pâté de foie gras from France because the animals are force-fed to enlarge their livers.

This is a long-grain rice grown in India.

These are small cups made of puff pastry that are meant to hold individual portions of savory fillings. Look for them in bakeries or among the frozen foods in supermarkets.

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.

Real pawpaws are native to North America, and have green peels, orange flesh, and taste like a blend of tropical fruit. They're hard to find in markets, though, since they must be eaten within a few days of being picked. Pawpaws continue to ripen after they're picked, and should be eaten only when they yield to a gentle squeeze, like a ripe avocado. Australians use the name pawpaw for the papaya, while others use it for the cherimoya.