All in the family: Ginger's cousin, galangal, makes its way on to U.S. menus

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 11, 1999 by Bret Thorn

As new foodstuffs continue to flood the U.S. market, chefs and diners alike seem driven to explore new gastronomic horizons.

Eager to be the Indiana Joneses of the culinary world, they surmount towers of foie gras and huckleberry napoleons. They battle their way through citrus-smoked squab breast salad over panko-crusted portobellos with truffle-passion fruit vinaigrette and feta, eagerly hunting down the coolest dining experience on the planet.

But chefs who have presented their customers with ostrich and emu or even with something as traditionally European as rabbit have found that few restaurant-goers actually are willing to risk palate and wallet simply for a taste of the exotic. They want something new -- but not too new. That means the time may be right for galangal.

Somewhat spicy and rather aromatic, this cousin of ginger tastes different enough not to be ginger, but not so different that it will scare people away.

"I find that it doesn't have such a sharpness to it [as ginger], but it gives the flavor that people love," says Guy Rubino, chef at ZooM in Toronto. He says galangal cooks better than its more popular relative, too.

"Ginger sometimes has a bitter aftertaste when you cook it. Galangal has a softer tone, a softer texture," he says.

"It's much more round-flavored," observes Rafael Neitzsch, who spent more than five years working as an executive chef at hotels in Bangkok, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, before taking up the toque at The Hempel hotel in London. "Ginger has a little bit of a sweet tone; galangal is more on the spicy side," he adds.

"It looks deceptively similar" to ginger, muses John McGrath of New York City's C3.

It looks so similar, in fact, that writers on Thai food have commented on tom kha gai, a soup of coconut milk and chicken prominently garnished with kaffir lime leaves and galangal, and assumed it was made with ginger.

Galangal and ginger certainly have much in common, but they're hardly interchangeable. In some ways galangal is more subtle; in others it is harsher with a mustardy or horseradishlike pungency.

"We make our own pickled galangal," says Rubino, who believes that it goes better with fatty fish, such as salmon, than ginger does. He makes a puree of galangal, garlic, chives, cilantro, coriander seeds, very dry sake, lemon grass and fish sauce and spreads it on top of salmon three to four minutes before the fish is done.

Rubino has used pickled chayote with galangal and sesame seeds to flavor duck confit. He pairs galangal with cardamom to make fish stocks and with guava to make barbecue sauce.

Doug Brown, executive chef at Dallas' Nana Grill -- who also prepared the citrus-smoked squab mentioned above, which was enthusiastically received at the James Beard House recently -- purees galangal, squeezes out the juice and adds it, along with a little kaffir lime leaf, to an otherwise-traditional panna cotta.

New York fusion chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten makes a galangal ice cream that he serves with lacquered peaches.

"We do a tomato-galangal broth for the summer," Vongerichten adds. "Galangal is like ginger with some eucalyptus hint to it. It clears the nose up."

Vongerichten also uses galangal in a salad of roasted quail, which includes watercress and thinly julienned red cabbage and fried leeks. He says you have to slice galangal very thin, "because it's pretty hot. You really have to make angel hair out of it." The salad is dressed with a vinaigrette seasoned with soy sauce and sherry vinegar.

He adds galangal peelings to the pan when he is roasting chicken wings to make a pungent jus, he says.

Galangal reportedly is used in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia and occasionally in the Middle East, but it is most widespread in the foods of Cambodia, Thailand and parts of Laos.

One of the most common uses of galangal is in tom yam, a Thai hot-and-sour soup that is simple to make, but whose flavors are difficult to balance correctly. Water or stock is boiled for a few minutes with kaffir lime leaves, sprigs of lemon grass and some thin, round slices of galangal. Fresh chili peppers or roasted chili paste or both are added, along with seafood -- usually shrimp -- or sometimes chicken. When the protein is cooked, fresh straw mushrooms are tossed in, the seasoning is adjusted with fish sauce and lime juice, and the soup is served immediately, usually with a garnish of fresh cilantro leaves. The diner is expected to fish out the lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves and galangal, as they are not supposed to be eaten.

Galangal, whose Thai name is kha, is the main seasoning in tom kha gai, a soup of chicken and coconut mentioned above. It is prepared similarly to tom yam, except that coconut milk is used instead of broth.

Neitzsch prepares a similar soup but adds a Mediterranean flair by adding squid ink. "The ink makes it black and has a little fishy flavor," says Neitzsch, who advises that the freshest galangal is the lightest in color and with the fewest sprouts.