Kholengan

Surprisingly I have had several emails about a spice I use called ?Kholengan?. Now this is a new one to me as well but one I have passionately fell in love with to say the least. My mother in law (a Saudi) introduced this spice to me and was nice enough to even give me a large supply. This most defiantly is something that I never saw once in the states and we moved around a lot.

This foreign spice looks like a piece of ginger made of wood. I have researched and researched and never found anything until I happened to look into a old Saudi cookbook that I have and the author not only calls the spice ?kholengan? but also its original name which is ?galanqa? bing we hit the jack pot! After finding that name I was able to research and find the below information. When I smell the spice, it reminds me of a very strong clove smell, almost menthol if you will. The taste well I can not pinpoint it to be able to tell you what to substitute it with as it is so exotic but it gives the food an astonishing taste. If you do not have it do not worry your dish will be fine without it.

The Galangal plant (Galanga, Blue Ginger) is a assamse adaa with culinary and medicinal uses (Thai: ??? ("Kha") , Malay: lengkuas (Alpinia galangal), Traditional Mandarin: ??, Simplified Mandarin: ??, T:???/S:???, Cantonese: lam keong, ??, Vietnamese: Ri?ng). It is used in various oriental cuisines (for example in Thai cuisine Tom Yum soups and Dtom Kha Gai, Vietnamese Huenian cuisine (Tre) and throughout Indonesian cuisine, for example, in Soto (food)). Though it resembles the ginger that it is related to, there is little similarity in taste.

In its raw form, galangal has a citrus, earthy aroma, with hints of pine and soap in the flavor. It is available as a whole root, or cut or powdered. The whole fresh root is very hard, and slicing it requires a sharp knife. 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. In the Indonesian language, greater galangalis called lengkuas or laos and lesser galangal is called kencur. It is also known as galanggal, and somewhat confusingly galingale, which is also the name for several plants of the unrelated Cyperus genus of sedges (also with aromatic rhizomes). In Thai language, greater galangalis called "???" (Kha) or "???????" (Kha yai), while lesser galangal is called "????????" (Kha ta daeng).

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

Alpinia galanga is also known as Chewing John, Little John Chew and galanga root. It is used in African-American folk medicine and hoodoofolk magic.