Achar. A spiced pickle made with vegetables and coloured yellow with turmeric. In Bengal the most popular ingredients are mango, mixed vegetables, chillis and olives.
Dry ginger. Used very commonly with onion in onion-ginger paste - base for many sauces for fish preparations
Unrefined cane sugar. Molasses from cane which is produced seasonally - both solid and thick gel-like liquid variants are popular.
Galangal, often used in Bengal in making chutneys. It is the rhizome of a plant of the ginger family, although it is smaller and more shrivelled. It has more translucent, flesh-coloured skin than the rhizome of ginger. It is peeled and grated or thinly sliced and used in the same way that fresh ginger is used, but has a slightly more complex flavour reminiscent of camphor. Greater galangal resembles a cross between ginger and pepper; lesser galangal is more pungent with cardamom and eucalyptus flavours, whilst kempferia is the strongest.
