Ingredients

Photo by Bill Gracey The small yet seemingly impenetrable achiote seed, which is often commonly named the annatto seed, is available worldwide both as a whole seed and in ground form. It is a highly-regarded ingredient in both Hispanic and Indian cuisine for its subtle bitter and earthy flavors along with its gorgeous burnished copper […]

Rice, the main source of sustenance for half of the world’s population, comes in an endless variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Rice grains can be long, like those of basmati rice from India and jasmine rice from Thailand; tiny, like mochi-gome from Japan, which is similar in shape to Italian arborio rice; or somewhere […]

Photo by BocaDorada Bonito is a type of tuna, which is a member of the mackerel family, and one of the most important fish in Japanese cuisine. Rarely eaten fresh, the dark, oily meat is dried into very hard cubes, which must be ground or shaved with a special tool before use. Bonito shavings form […]

Chilli Pepper Photo by pixel2013 You could not count the number of chiles — fresh and dried, pickled and ground — that greet you when you enter a Mexican market center. The chile is ancient — evidence in Mexico traces it back to 3500 BCE. In the 16th century, the Portuguese explorers brought these fiery […]

Semolina is coarsely ground durum wheat, a highly glutinous (hard) wheat. When other grains, such as rice or corn, are similarly ground, they are referred to as “semolina,” i.e., “corn semolina” or “rice semolina.”

Photo by avlxyz  Soy sauce is a staple condiment and ingredient throughout all of Asia. Produced for thousands of years, soy sauce is a salty, brown liquid made from fermented soy beans mixed with some type of roasted grain (wheat, barley, or rice are common), injected with a special yeast mold, and liberally flavored with salt. […]

The name coriander does not signify one thing — it represents a seed, a leaf and a powder used in Central America, South America, all of Asia, the Mediterranean basin, the Southwest of the United States, and in any menu that replicates the flavors of one or all of these regions. Coriander-the-leaf is also known as […]