go crazy on galangal

There is a girl on either side and one in the middle. What can happen; what can be done?

This may be a crossword puzzle clue. It could be two strange girls from Transylvania. This may be a bad palindrome. Or it could be a spelling mistake.

None of these. Galangal is nothing more than an occasion for a fight, especially for tupenny gourmands who pretend that Thai is a great way to fly away. For example, I had a fight with myself about whether it was actually galangal or galingal. It got so intense that I almost blacked out my eyes.

“You are Dravidian,” I shouted at myself. “It’s galangal, close to galgal, which is the Bengali word for strong galangal.”

“Shut up,” I yelled at myself. “Look past any packet of ready-made Thai green curry, and you’ll see it written as galingal with an i.”

“I always knew you were one to buy ready-made curry paste,” I said, laughing, feeling a chink in my armour. “For your information, Thais do not call it galangal or galingal. They call it something else!”

“Ha!” I retorted.

“And it doesn’t grow in India,”

I added.

I was silent.

It’s a good time to talk about galangal as Indians now officially top the list of tourists visiting Thailand in terms of numbers, overtaking the Chinese. They’re everywhere, hopping over to the locals, looking for home-cooked meals, checking out massage parlors and seeking out Thai food. Mostly green curry chicken if I’m honest.

While the man is roaming the infamous narrow streets, his wife is trying to master Thai cuisine to impress the girls at the knitting club in Mumbai. Here he will face Gangal.

He will be told that it is an essential and key ingredient in Thai cooking. Galangal and lemongrass are two irreplaceable additives that make the difference between a quickly forgotten green curry and authentic, undeniable Thai green curry.

Here’s what my foreign book says about Ganganagar. Verbatim: “The flavor is associated with ginger, but it has aromas primarily of pine and citrus.” If you’ve smelled neither pine nor citrus, let me summarize it for you: The scent of galangal is sexy. It seduces, seduces and teases, enveloping the entire curry with magic.

There was once a senior chef at Hotel President who tried to grow galangal in a special plot behind his 5-star hotel, and made several trips to Bangkok for research. On his very first visit he learned that he had to ask for food in a low voice. Nothing if not authentic, the chef brought back a few tons of clay from Thailand, and he put a lot of kha in it.

“Soil makes a big difference,” he told me, a man detailed to the bitter end. “Also, temperature, pressure, water quality and son. We have tried to mimic Thai conditions in our greenhouse.

Needless to say, their experiment was an epic failure. You can’t do in India what Thai people do in Thailand.

Back to Desperate Housewives. Desperate to obtain some genuine Gangajal, she will go from market to market asking for it and receive blank stares. Apparently no one uses galangal in Thailand. He doesn’t get to know about B from the slow voice.

My complicated relationship with Gangajal began in the kitchen of my home in Mumbai when a friend gifted me a plastic jar of ready-made Thai green curry paste. The instructions were so simple that even a defective schoolboy could put the dish together. Measure 50 grams of curry paste for every 200 grams of meat or vegetables (any veggies!). Add two glasses of beautiful, thick, fresh, creamy coconut milk to it. Let it boil until the meat is cooked. Done.

That evening, everyone praised my accomplished culinary skills and I politely disagreed. “It’s nothing,” I muttered. “Anyone can do this, even you. All you have to do is make the green curry paste-“

The second time I threw a green curry party, I didn’t have packaged curry paste. I have to make my own, I realized with a sinking feeling. I knew I could get lemongrass at Nature’s Basket – but you can’t get good one in India.

What you can’t get, you must replace. I had no option but to cheat and make the green curry paste without the galangal. Meanwhile, I also threw out the lemongrass; One for a penny, one for a pound. Who will know the difference? Who would even care? This is India, the mother of democracy. We are Jugaad people.

In my opinion, the best Indian alternative to kha is aamdrak (a ginger-like root produced by combining raw mango and ginger). You’ll find green curry paste the perfect shade of emerald green, it will have a rough texture – and probably no Thai restaurant will touch its taste.

But it will still be so delicious that you probably won’t even panic. Simply follow the Indian Jugaad Green Curry Paste recipe given below.
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Don’t see a recipe? This is because you have not written me an email for this. Please don’t forget to say.

You can reach CY Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are personal and do not represent the views of the newspaper