Cooking Ingredients

Gar­lic

Gar­lic (Bawang Putih), com­mon name for sev­eral strongly scented herbs of the lily fam­ily, and for the bulbs of these plants, which are used as a fla­vor­ing. Gar­lic, like the related onion, has small, six-part, whitish flow­ers borne on umbels. The fruit is a cap­sule con­tain­ing black, kidney-shaped seeds. Com­mon gar­lic has been cul­ti­vated since ancient times. The bulb, which has a strong char­ac­ter­is­tic odor and taste, is cov­ered with a papery skin and may be bro­ken into con­stituent bul­blets, called cloves.

Gar­lic is used as a fla­vor­ing in cook­ing and pick­ling, some­times in the form of whole or grated cloves and some­times in the form of a cooked extract, as in sauces and dress­ings. In med­i­cine, gar­lic is used as a diges­tive stim­u­lant, diuretic, and anti­spas­modic. Other pos­si­ble mild med­i­c­i­nal uses are under inves­ti­ga­tion. The British wild gar­lic, the Amer­i­can wild gar­lic, and the field gar­lic of both Europe and the Amer­i­cas are also used for sea­son­ing. The false gar­lic, or crow poi­son, is a North Amer­i­can species with pale yel­low or pale green flow­ers closely related to gar­lic but lack­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tic gar­lic odor. It is poi­so­nous to livestock.

Gin­ger

Gin­ger (Jahe), com­mon name for a plant fam­ily with about 50 gen­era and 1300 species. It is pantrop­i­cal in dis­tri­b­u­tion, although mostly Far East­ern. Its com­pli­cated, irreg­u­lar flow­ers have one fer­tile sta­men and a usu­ally showy label­lum, formed from two or three ster­ile sta­min­odes. The fam­ily is cul­ti­vated widely in the trop­ics for its showy flow­ers and use­ful prod­ucts, derived mostly from the rhi­zomes. These prod­ucts include the fla­vor­ing gin­ger; East Indian arrow­root, a food starch; and turmeric, an impor­tant ingre­di­ent in curry powder.

Jicama

Jicama (bengkuang), a starchy tuber­ous root eaten raw in sal­ads or cooked as a vegetable

Kluwak

Kluwak nuts come from the kepayang tree (Pangium edule) of Indone­sia & Malaysia, a mem­ber of the fla­cour­tia fam­ily (Fla­cour­tiaceae). The oily, hard-shelled seeds super­fi­cially resem­ble Brazil nuts. Meaty seeds are edi­ble after the poi­so­nous hydro­cyanic acid is removed by soak­ing and boil­ing them in water. Fer­mented kluwak nuts become chocolate-brown, greasy and very slip­pery. Cooked seeds are used in a num­ber of pop­u­lar Malaysian and Indone­sian dishes.

Ken­cur

Ken­cur It is some­times known as lesser galan­gal. This ginger-like root has a unique, cham­por fla­vor and should be used spar­ingly. Wash it and scrape off the skin before using. Dried sliced ken­cur or ken­cur pow­der can be used as a sub­sti­tute. Soak dried slices in boil­ing water for approx­i­mat­ley 30 min­utes; use ½-1 tsp. of pow­der for 1-inch fresh root.

Lime

Lime (fruit), com­mon name for a tree (see Rue), and for its fruit (see Cit­rus). Limes are native to South­east Asia and are cul­ti­vated chiefly in trop­i­cal regions. The trees are sel­dom more than 4.6 m (more than 15 ft) high and grow irreg­u­larly, form­ing crooked trunks. The white flow­ers are sim­i­lar to flow­ers of oranges. The small fruit ranges in shape from oval to spher­i­cal, with a thin yellow-green rind, or exo­carp; a thin white meso­carp; and a pulpy, acid, juicy, yellow-green flesh, or endo­carp. The juice con­tains small quan­ti­ties of vit­a­min C, but lime juice was used to pre­vent scurvy long before the word vit­a­min was coined and before it was known that lemons con­tain larger quan­ti­ties of vit­a­min C. The nick­name Limey was applied to the Eng­lish sailors who were rou­tinely sup­plied with limes to pre­vent scurvy. Limes are not exten­sively cul­ti­vated in the United States; most limes mar­keted in the United States are grown in Mex­ico. Many suc­cess­ful hybrids of lime and lemon, such as the Per­rine lemon, are pro­duced in the lemon-growing areas of the United States. Com­mer­cial limes are grown for juice.

Nut­meg

Nut­meg (Pala), com­mon name applied to any of a fam­ily of ever­green shrubs and trees. The fam­ily com­prises about 19 gen­era and 400 species. The nut­meg is native to the Moluc­cas in Indone­sia. It has also been widely cul­ti­vated in south­ern Asia, the West Indies, and Brazil for its seeds, which yield var­i­ous spices, and for its tim­ber. Plants in the fam­ily are dioe­cious, with incon­spic­u­ous flow­ers. The fruit is a yel­low drupe hav­ing a diam­e­ter of about 5 cm (about 2 in), pop­u­larly called the nut­meg apple, which splits into two halves, thereby reveal­ing the seed sur­rounded by a fleshy outer coat­ing. In plants of the typ­i­cal genus, which con­tains about 80 species, this seed is dried to form the culi­nary spice pop­u­larly known as nut­meg. The fleshy orange coat around the seed is peeled off and also dried to form the spice known as mace. The most com­mon nut­meg tree grows to a height of about 15 m (about 50 ft).

Palm Sugar

Palm Sugar, Juice extracted from coconut or aren palm flow­ers is boiled and packed into moulds to make sugar with a faint caramel taste. If palm sugar is not avail­able, sub­ti­tute soft brown sugar, or a mix­ture of brown sugar and maple syrup. To make palm sugar syrup, com­bine equal amounts of chopped palm sugar and water, adding pan­dan leaf if avail­able. Bring to boil, sim­mer for 10 min­utes, strain and store in refrigerator.

Pan­dan Leaves

Pan­dan Leaf is widely used in Asia, Aus­tralia, and the Pacific Islands. The Screw­pine tree is a peren­nial and needs to grow in warm, damp areas in par­tial sun­light. The soil must be kept moist. The tree grows to be twenty-six feet high. The leaves are used there like we use vanilla fla­vor­ing. This leaf also has med­i­c­i­nal prop­er­ties. In ancient times, the leaves were used for mak­ing house thatch­ing and women’s grass skirts. The fruit heads are approx­i­mately eight inches in diam­e­ter and looks like a green pineapple.

Peanut

Peanut (Kacang), com­mon name for an annual warm-season plant of the legume fam­ily, and for its seeds. Peanuts orig­i­nated in South Amer­ica, prob­a­bly in Brazil, and have been cul­ti­vated since ancient times by Native Amer­i­cans. Plants grow about 75 cm (about 30 in) tall and can spread 1.2 m (4 ft). Some types develop a bunchy erect growth; oth­ers, called run­ners, spread over the ground. The peanut is unusual in that, after the flower is fer­til­ized, the elon­gated recep­ta­cle, called the peg, turns down­ward from the base of the flower stalk to bury the ovary tip in the soil, where the fruit or pod develops.

Peanuts are nutri­tious and high in energy. The seeds con­tain 40 to 50 per­cent oil and 20 to 30 per­cent pro­tein, and they are an excel­lent source of B vit­a­mins. About half the peanuts grown in the United States are made into peanut but­ter, and one-fourth are sold as roasted peanuts. Peanut oil is also pop­u­lar as a high-quality salad and cook­ing oil and is com­monly used in margarine.

Pep­per Powder

Pep­per (mer­ica), com­mon name for a fam­ily com­pris­ing a medium-size group of shrubby or herba­ceous flow­er­ing plants, and for its rep­re­sen­ta­tive genus. The fam­ily con­tains between 5 and 10 gen­era and about 2000 species. Pantrop­i­cal in dis­tri­b­u­tion, it is par­tic­u­larly abun­dant in moist areas. Other than the rep­re­sen­ta­tive genus, the only eco­nom­i­cally impor­tant mem­ber of the fam­ily is a genus some­times called pep­per elder. An orna­men­tal plant, it is grown in greenhouses.

Pep­per, the world’s most impor­tant spice (see Spices), is pre­pared from the pep­per­corn, the fruit of the pep­per plant, a climb­ing vine native to India and widely cul­ti­vated in hot, moist areas of trop­i­cal Asia. Pep­per­corns that are har­vested while green and imma­ture and then allowed to dry yield black pep­per. To pro­duce white pep­per, red and ripe pep­per­corns are soaked in water and their outer cov­er­ing is rubbed off. Pep­per is one of the old­est known spices, in use for at least 3000 years. Although pep­per con­tains sev­eral alka­loids, its pun­gency is caused by a resin, chavicine. Chili and sweet pep­pers are derived from plants of the night­shade family.