Saturday, March 01, 2008

The Serendipity of Turmeric (and other rhizome tea tales)


It was a week of culinary serendipity.

One day I'm reading Madhur Jaffrey's top 100 of Saveur piece on fresh turmeric, a few days later I'm at Paris' Passage Brady in front of a bin of the stuff.

One day I'm reading a blog about making ice cream with condensed milk and cursing the universe that I can't find it here. Several days later, Veronica tells me that she adds it to horchata and I need to scope out the part of the grocery store I'm not as familiar with - the unrefrigerated milk section.

And so, one serendipitous week and a few days later, I am the queen of rhizome teas.
After taking Katie and Veronica on a spice run to make homemade chai, I remembered Ginger Tea and with the canned milks find, fled home for a quick blended brew. It's deep with ginger and smoky with black tea and that earthy undertone of sweetened condensed milk and one of the best teas I know.

Today, I returned to my less familiar rhizome and peeled a knob to make sure it was the orange yellow finger-stainer that I thought it was. A faint Dr. Weil-said-that-Okinawans-live-to-be-100-because-they-drink-it-daily memory and several Internet searches later, I boiled it with a few cups of water and one cardamon pod. One cup later, I'm a fan.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

turmeric cures ear infections. you only have to drink it, not drizzle it down your ear canal, too. imagine! :)

Anonymous said...

mmmmm, sounds so delish. ít's restaurant week here in sao paulo - i'll be thinking of you as i gorge down all the yummy delights!

jessica said...

i think fresh is much better - less tinny (is this always the critique of spices?? it is for Jaffrey for sure) - more like ginger.

i didn't believe i could stain hands/knife/cutting board. duh. of course i did. ;)