Tumeric hints?

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jimbob

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Made soy cured ocean trout with tumeric coconut caramel and pickled daikon. (courtesy of gingerboy, a favourite melbourne restaurant) Sourced some fresh tumeric root which was so much better than when i used powder. Only i had no idea how messy this stuff is! Apart from stained hands, board(not my boardsmith thankfully!) and pretty much all that touched it, it left an impossibly thick hard residue on my kato which could only be flitzed off, ending a particularly pleasing patina. Any tips on how to use this stuff?
 
I used to have it growing in the garden when I lived the Kimberleys . It's certainly messy stuff , I would handle it with disposable gloves using a ceramic japanese ginger grater for the processing .
Awesome ingredient if you've never used the fresh stuff before, has a pungent almost musky flavour . Good dish try it out is Aloo goobi ( indian potato dish ).
 
Yes. Keep it off anything that might pick up colour - especially nice wood. We mash it in a mortar & pestle with other things, depending on the dish. Agree that it can flavour fish quite well.
 
Yes mortar and pestle or a Japanese ceramic grater. It'll stain your ceramic grater even if it's well glazed. I don't mind it, just think of it as another kind of patina! Get it on your clothes and I reckon no amount of Napisan will get rid of it. Bleach will destroy your fabric before the stain gets out. It's amazing stuff.

But fresh turmeric has a flavour that nothing can substitute. I use it often in Nyonya dishes. Want to know about Nyonya cuisine? Google it, it's one of the very early "fusion" cuisines I think. The powdered tumeric is better for Indian curries.

There's a kind of tumeric that's much paler, something the colour of strawberry blond. This may be the immature root or possibly another kind of tumeric altogether. It's fantastic in a salad. I had this for the first time in Thailand last year. It doesn't taste nearly as intense as the mature orange coloured turmeric but has a good crunch and wonderful flavour. I haven't seen this anywhere in Australia before.
 

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