Indonesia (revisited)
Guess what I found!
Fresh turmeric! If you look closely, the piece on the right has an "eye" growing on it. That means that my ginger plant is going to have a friend (provided I'm able to grow this piece of turmeric). According to the internet, I'm going to need a larger flower pot than what I have, and this is the wrong time of year to find large flower pots. I started it in the largest pot I have, and will deal with finding a bigger container when I need to.
Hi ginger plant. Look how big it's getting! Apparently both types of plants are rather slow growing, and the fall/winter is not the optimal time to try to grow these, but I'm limited to availability, and the fall is when I found suitable rhizomes with "eyes". Heaven knows that I could use a little bit of the tropics during winter, and growing tropical plants is the closest I could feasibly get to somewhere tropical.
I got both my ginger and turmeric at the local organic food co-op.
Okay, so one piece is about twice the size of the other. I weighed them out first and adjusted how much ginger I put into the pot.
According to the instructions I found many months ago, you're supposed to bash these up with a mortar and pestle. It's kind of strange smashing up fresh ginger. It is springy, and resilient, and takes a bit of time to break up. There are long, fibrous strands inside, and I put about half of it into a container for later use, and half into the pot to boil.
Then I moved on to the turmeric. It looks like pumpkin, and smells different than the dried stuff. I also noticed a bit of orange when I rinsed things off after smashing up my turmeric.
I tossed a cinnamon stick in the pan since that is how the original was made. I used about 7 grams each of ginger and turmeric. The picture is shown with 2 cups (500 mL) water, but I doubled the liquid to about 4 cups (1 L), and brought it to a boil. Then I simmered it for several minutes.
At first, I was wondering if I would need to cut this with some plain hot water. As it turns out, I didn't. You get a lovely, topaz colored tea. Now I need to put the pulp from my first batch of tea in the fridge. As I recall, it can make 4-5 pots of tea before it really starts to lose its flavor. So here is the (more) authentic version of Indonesian tea.
Hi ginger plant. Look how big it's getting! Apparently both types of plants are rather slow growing, and the fall/winter is not the optimal time to try to grow these, but I'm limited to availability, and the fall is when I found suitable rhizomes with "eyes". Heaven knows that I could use a little bit of the tropics during winter, and growing tropical plants is the closest I could feasibly get to somewhere tropical.
I got both my ginger and turmeric at the local organic food co-op.
Okay, so one piece is about twice the size of the other. I weighed them out first and adjusted how much ginger I put into the pot.
According to the instructions I found many months ago, you're supposed to bash these up with a mortar and pestle. It's kind of strange smashing up fresh ginger. It is springy, and resilient, and takes a bit of time to break up. There are long, fibrous strands inside, and I put about half of it into a container for later use, and half into the pot to boil.
Then I moved on to the turmeric. It looks like pumpkin, and smells different than the dried stuff. I also noticed a bit of orange when I rinsed things off after smashing up my turmeric.
I tossed a cinnamon stick in the pan since that is how the original was made. I used about 7 grams each of ginger and turmeric. The picture is shown with 2 cups (500 mL) water, but I doubled the liquid to about 4 cups (1 L), and brought it to a boil. Then I simmered it for several minutes.
At first, I was wondering if I would need to cut this with some plain hot water. As it turns out, I didn't. You get a lovely, topaz colored tea. Now I need to put the pulp from my first batch of tea in the fridge. As I recall, it can make 4-5 pots of tea before it really starts to lose its flavor. So here is the (more) authentic version of Indonesian tea.
You really like trying to grow things.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the turmeric hasn't done anything. Today was 3 weeks, so I pulled it out of the pot to look, and nothing has happened. The ginger is still hanging on, but I don't think that it likes the cloudy, dreary weather we have been having.
ReplyDelete