All Ingredients

This Hispanic paste is made from ground pumpkin seeds mixed with oil, chiles, sesame seeds, and other ingredients. It's used to make rich, creamy sauces.

This Mexican herb tastes a bit like cilantro and mint.

This is a firm, tart apple that's great for pies, baking, and applesauce.

Pirarucu are large (7 feet) fish native to the Amazon basin. Pirarucu meat is mild flavored and firm textured. Overfishing has reduced their numbers. It is unusual in that in needs to breath air.

These are insanely hot tiny peppers.

This is a fiery Portuguese sauce. To make your own: See the Piri Piri Sauce recipe posted on RecipeSource.com.

This Peruvian brandy is based on Muscat wine.

pismos are highly regarded.

These green Middle Eastern nuts are encased in tan shells, which are sometimes dyed red. They're crunchy and delicately sweet, so they're great in everything from ice cream to pilafs. When the nuts are mature enough to eat, the shells split open enough that they can be pulled off easily with your fingers. Unopened shells contain immature kernels and should be discarded. Pistachios are available shelled or unshelled, salted or unsalted, roasted or raw. To roast, put shelled pistachios on a baking pan and in bake them in a 325° oven, stirring occasionally, until they're slightly golden, about ten minutes.

This puffy Middle Eastern flatbread is often cut in half, pulled open to form a pocket, and then filled with hot savory ingredients. It's also served like bread at meals, or cut into wedges, toasted, and served with dips. Look for pita bread among the baked goods in supermarkets.

This is a ceramic slab that you preheat in the oven. A pizza baked on one will cook more evenly and develop a crisper crust.

These long buckwheat noodles are popular in northern Italy.

These look just like large green bananas, and they're usually cooked before eating. Hispanic and Caribbean use them like potatoes, either frying them or boiling them in stews. Different recipes may call for plantains in varying stages of ripeness, with their skins either green, yellow, or black. A green plantain will first turn yellow and then black if allowed to ripen at room temperature. As it ripens, the pulp becomes sweeter and less starchy.

Nigerians make fufu out of this.

Plastic wrap is terrific for covering foods to be stored in the refrigerator or cooked in the microwave. It clings especially well to glass, ceramic, and china dishes. You can also use it to wrap foods for short-term freezer storage, though you should use aluminum foil if you're storing something in the freezer for a long time since foil is better at preventing moisture loss.

Plums are juicier than other stone fruits, and have a longer growing season. There are many varieties, some sweet, some acidic, and some best suited for drying into prunes. They're often eaten out of hand, but they also work well in cobblers, compotes, and tarts.

Distilled from plums, plum brandy is usually colorless and quite potent. Slivovitz = slivovic = slivowitz ( SHLIV-uh-vits) is made in Serbia and Bosnia from blue plums, and is very highly regarded. Other varieties include mirabelle (made with yellow plums), quetsch (Alsatian plums), pflümli, and light green prunelle.

These are wines that are made from plums. Some producers leave the stones in while the plums are fermenting, giving the wine a bit of almond flavoring as well.

This is a plum/apricot cross, with plum dominating.

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.

Hawaiians make this out of taro root, which is cooked, pounded into a paste, and then sometimes fermented. It's somewhat bland, and usually served as an accompaniment to other foods, much like mainlanders serve mashed potatoes.

This Italian specialty is made of cornmeal that's been cooked into a thick mush. The mush is either served hot, much as Americans would serve mashed potatoes, or it's cooled, sliced, and then fried, grilled, or baked. It's easy to make at home, or you can get tubes of ready-made polenta in the refrigerated section of many supermarkets.

Pollock is an important north Pacific groundfish.

Asian markets sell this inexpensive roe in wooden boxes. It's often baked and served on rice.

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

The family of pome fruits include apples, pears, quinces, Asian pears, and loquats.

Cut through the pomegranate's leathery skin, and you'll find hundreds of pretty kernels, each with a tiny seed surrounded by ruby red pulp. You can eat the kernels, seeds and all, and they're great as garnishes or sprinkled in salads. You can also press the kernels for juice and strain out the seeds. Wear an apron when working with pomegranates; the juice can stain your clothes. They arrive in markets in the late summer and early fall.