All Ingredients

These are similar to star fruit, only with purple skins.

Star fruit have a clean, crisp texture, and they make terrific star-shaped garnishes when sliced. They're also easy to use, since they don't need to be peeled or seeded, and they're slow to discolor. Some varieties are sweet, some are sour. Try to avoid ones that have brown spots or streaks.

Notes: These silky powders are used to thicken sauces, gravies, pie fillings, and puddings. They're popular because they thicken without adding fat or much flavor. To avoid lumps, mix the starch with an equal amount of cold liquid until it forms a paste, then whisk it into the liquid you're trying to thicken. Once the thickener is added, cook it briefly to remove the starchy flavor. Don't overcook--liquids thickened with some starches will thin again if cooked too long or at too high a temperature. Cornstarch, arrowroot, and tapioca are the most popular starch thickeners. They have different strengths and weaknesses, so it's a good idea to stock all three in your pantry. Starch thickeners give food a transparent, glistening sheen, which looks nice in a pie filling, but a bit artificial in a gravy or sauce. If you want high gloss, choose tapioca or arrowroot. If you want low gloss, choose cornstarch. Cornstarch is the best choice for thickening dairy-based sauces. Arrowroot becomes slimy when mixed with milk products. Choose arrowroot if you're thickening an acidic liquid. Cornstarch loses potency when mixed with acids. Sauces made with cornstarch turn spongy when they're frozen. If you plan to freeze a dish, use tapioca starch or arrowroot as a thickener. Starch thickeners don't add much flavor to a dish, although they can impart a starchy flavor if they're undercooked. If you worried that your thickener will mask delicate flavors in your dish, choose arrowroot. It's the most neutral tasting of the starch thickeners. Tapioca starch thickens quickly, and at a relatively low temperature. It's a good choice if you want to correct a sauce just before serving it.

These are breads that are made with a starter instead of fresh yeast. A starter is a mixture of flour, water, and baker's yeast that been set out so that it can be colonized by airborne yeast and friendly bacteria. Starters lend a special character to the bread--sourdough bread, for example, needs to be made with a starter to acquire a sour flavor.

This fits inside pots of different sizes, and the petals open to accommodate vegetables, seafood, or whatever else you want to steam.

These are groats that have been chopped into small pieces. They're chewier than rolled oats, and grain aficionados often prefer them for hot oatmeal cereals and muesli

These small star shapes are a type of Italian soup pasta. A smaller version is called stellini.

These pasta shapes look like tiny stars. They cook quickly and are best used in soups.

This heirloom bean is sometimes used to make Boston baked beans.

This has been touted has a healthful alternative to non-nutritive artificial sweeteners. It's quite sweet, but has a bitter aftertaste. Look for it in health food stores.

These cubes of meat are tough enough to require slow cooking in a liquid. Don't use them for kabobs--they're too tough for the grill.

This is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the cow's milk blue cheeses. Made in England, it's firmer and milder than Roquefort or Gorgonzola. It's excellent with pears. Don't eat the rind.

These tiny pasta shapes are usually served in a broth or very light soup.

This rich German coffee cake is traditionally served at Christmas.

This is found on the East Coast, especially in Florida. Just the claws are harvested. Substitutes: claws of blue crabs

The family of stone fruits includes cherries, plums, apricots, nectarines, and peaches. They all arrive in the summer, though you can sometimes find pricey imports during the off-season. Stone fruits don't become sweeter after they're picked, but growers often harvest them while they're still a bit underripe so that they won't bruise during transit. At the market, select specimens that have the color, if not the softness, of fully ripened fruit, then take them home and let them soften at room temperature for a few days.

These onions are available year-round, since their low water content prevents molding during storage. Since storage makes onions more pungent, these onions are usually cooked before eating. This category includes the yellow onion, white onion, red onion, Spanish onion, and Bermuda onion.

This is a small form of elbow macaroni.

This dark beer tastes strongly of malt and hops. Guinness is a popular brand.

This soft Italian cow's milk cheese is mild and spreadable. It's great on pizza. Use within a few days after purchasing and, for best flavor, serve at room temperature.

These are a common ingredient in Chinese stir-fries. They're hard to find fresh, but canned straw mushrooms work well and are sold in many supermarkets. Better yet, but harder to find, are dried straw mushrooms, which have a more intense flavor than canned.

Strawberries aren't as fragile as other berries, so they don't need the special handling that makes most berries so expensive. The best time to buy them is in the spring, but you can find them throughout the year, though the price might be higher and the quality lower. Select berries that have fully ripened to a dark red.

This is a sweet Italian herbal liqueur.

An Umbrian specialty, this is a narrow ribbon pasta that's chewier and thicker than spaghetti.

The name means "priest strangler" in Italian, and it refers to a pasta shape that resembles a rolled towel.

This is used by German and Austrian cooks to make strudels, delicate pastries filled with sweet or savory fillings. The dough is made up of many layers, each rolled into a tissue-thin, almost transparent sheet. German cooks make strudels with it by stretching the dough and wrapping it around a filling, and then baking it. It's hard to find, but your best bet is a German market.

These are fresh pasta sheets that are stuffed with a filling and then folded into whimsical shapes. In the past, they were just a fancy way to recycle leftovers, but cooks now stuff them with more elegant fillings, like cheeses, veal, sweet potatoes, wild mushrooms, lobster, and pheasant. After they're cooked, they're often served with a light sauce, or in a broth or pasta salad. They freeze well, and are great to keep on hand for quick and easy meals. If you're cooking frozen stuffed pasta, allow two or three additional minutes for it to cook.

This is usually put inside a whole turkey to absorb flavorful juices while the bird roasts, but it can also be baked in a casserole dish. It's usually made of small bread cubes or shredded pieces of bread that have been dried. Commercial stuffing is convenient, but not as fresh-tasting as homemade stuffing.

This is just like napa cabbage, only elongated.

This is pure dried sugar cane juice. The dark color is due to the retention of molasses.

An artifical sweetner. A popular brand is Splenda.

These are made of bamboo and used to make sushi rolls.

It is the hard white fat on the kidneys and loins of cattle, sheep, and other animals, used to make foods including puddings, pastry, and mincemeat. Your butcher will probably give some of this to you for free.