[Sca-cooks] Food items?

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

AEllin Olafs dotter wrote:
>I am now the proud possessor of sliced dried galangale. I remember a
>discussion of the impossibility of grinding dry hunks of the stuff, and
>presume that's why it is sliced very thin. Now I need to figure out what
>I am going to do with this.

Dried sliced galangal can be used in Thai soups, such as Tom Kha Gai 
(kha is the Thai word for galangal). It's chicken soup with coconut 
milk in the broth, chunks of chicken, floating slabs of galangal, and 
lots of tasty spices.

I suppose you could also try grinding it to use in Medieval cooking.

>I also  have a cylinder of sugar. It's from Indonesia. The label says
>Gula Jawa, which might be the product and might be the brand, and
>there's a sticker on it that adds Sudah Disaring BERSIH.   What does
>this tell me? (Anahita??)  It says the ingredients are Arenga sugar and
>Cane sugar (which doesn't tell me much more than the Indonesian...
>what's Arenga? OK, Cane, I know.) Comments? Information?

"Gula Jawa" means "Javanese Sugar". "Sudah Disaring Bersih" means 
"Already Strained Clean". Arenga is a palm, the sap of which is used 
to make sugar.

So, what you have is Palm Sugar, one of my favorites. I buy creamy 
Thai palm sugar in plastic tubs and eat it with a spoon. (well, ok, 
not often, but when i have it...)

It's great for making Sri Kaya, a coconut milk, egg, and palm sugar 
pudding, I'll find a recipe and post it...

Anahita