Bean sprouts. A common ingredient in many eastern dishes and for salads, they are the crisp, tender sprouts of various beans, produced by placing them in a little water and allowing them to germinate. They are best eaten raw. They can also be stir fried or sautéed but for not more than half a minute. The beans most commonly used are soya, mung and curd beans though there are many others which can be used. Crisp-looking sprouts with the seeds still attached should be chosen and they should be used quickly as they do not store well. In Delhi, the cook of the house where we stayed soaked mung beans, wrapped them in a muslin cloth and hung them in the kitchen overnight, dampening the cloth again in the morning, using the sprouts in the evening in cooked dishes.
Thin spokes of asparagus. Good for use in risotto and omelettes, in dishes where appearance is not necessarily important but flavour is.
Spunta is a second early potato with white skin and pale lemony flesh, firm, waxy, yet moist. Suitable for chips (US: fries) and shallow frying. Best boiled or parboiled and then finished off by frying.
The spurdog is a type of small shark or dogfish, said to make the best eating of all the dogfish. It is useful for its medium oily white flesh and is generally versatile. This fish is an excellent addition to soups because of its texture. It feeds on shellfish which flavours its own firm, white flesh. It grows 2-3 metres in length. Many of the names for types of dogfish are confused from place to place, and this may also be known as rock salmon or nursehound or, in some places, as rock eel. Spurdog, smoothound and tope are all sold as huss which is all very confusing and, to make life complete, you may even find it as school, tope or soupfin shark.
A name for the Balmain bug, a type of sand lobster found around the southern coasts of Australia and in some parts of the north west but mainly off the eastern seaboard. Sand lobsters are any of a variety of small crustaceans bearing a resemblance to lobsters and which bury themselves in sand or mud during the day. There are many of them, including bay bug, bay lobster, shovel-nosed lobster and rudder-nosed lobster which is similar to a slipper lobster. Moreton Bay bugs and Balmain bugs are available commercially. Moreton Bay bugs are slightly more triangular than the Balmain bug, which also have their eyes placed very centrally, while those of the Moreton Bay bug are placed right out on the margin of the carapace. They are available at around 25 cm (10") in length. Balmain bugs are said to be sligthly inferior in flavour to Moreton Bay bugs, which are also a little larger in size.
Squash greens, as you can see from the photograph, are the young leaves, shoots and tendrils of squash plants. Rather like pea shoots, these have a surprisingly concentrated flavour of their fruits. The wonderful Mexican soup, sopa de guias, is made with them.
A name in New England for large striped bass, a fish closely related to the excellent sea bass of European waters and found along the east coast of the United States. In the north it is likely to be called the rock-fish or rock.
