Ingredient: Galangal
Category: Herbs, Spices & Seasoning
Season: All
Galangal , Thai Ka, Malay lengkuas, Cantonese lam keong (also known as blue ginger), or in Vietnamese, Riềng.
It is a rhizome (a horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground ) with culinary and medicinal uses, best known in the west for its appearance in Thai cuisine and other Southeast Asian cuisine.
Though it resembles (and is related to) ginger in appearance, it tastes little like ginger.
In its raw form , galangal has a soapy, earthy aroma and a pine-like flavour with a faint hint of citrus.
It is available as a powder from vendors of Asian spices and is also available whole, cut or powdered from vendors of herbs.
A mixture of galangal and lime juice is used as a tonic , in parts of Southeast Asia. It is said to have the effect of an aphrodisiac, and act as a stimulant.
Galangal is also known as laos (it’s Indonesian name), galanggal, and somewhat confusingly galingale, which is also the name for several plants of the unrelated Cyperus genus of sedges (also having with aromatic rhizomes).
The word galangal, or its variant galanga is used as a common name for all members of the genus Alpinia, and in common usage can refer to four plants, all in the Zingiberaceae (ginger family):
Alpinia galanga or greater galangal
Alpinia officinarum or lesser galangal
Kaempferia galanga , also called lesser galangal or sand ginger
Boesenbergia pandurata , also called Chinese ginger or finger root
Alpina galanga is also known as Chewing John, Little John Chew and galanga root.
Many Thai recipes use thin slices cut across the section of the root to give a heady aroma to broths, they float on the surface decoratively and you have the choice to eat them or merely enjoy the smell.
Galangal is also one of the spices which powers green curry. |