Sneak Peak: What am I?

Next week we’ll be making a dish that uses this beauty:

Any guesses?  Leave your best guess in the comments (it doesn’t matter if you’re right!) and I will use the random number generator to pick one of your comments and send the winner some of this ingredient so they can make next week’s mystery dish too!  Anyone is welcome to enter (international readers included)!  I’ll keep the comments open until Tuesday, February 2nd, 2009, 10 pm PST.  Good luck! Comments are now closed!  The answer, and the winner will be announced in the next post!