Photo credit: Me, but it's a picture of someone else's picture in James Oseland's Cradle of Flavor.
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While I'm being all healthy and shit, I thought I'd stain my fingers and many other things a vivid tangerine color via Mr. Indelible Rhizome hisself. I bought some today*: our 45-second-away toko has fresh turmeric in their freezer, so I have no excuse, and I should really start using it more often.
Thus I'm going to make a turmeric-heavy sayur lodeh I think, unless I find something with an even more sinister Eastern European gangster-sounding name.
*LANGUAGE NOTE/HILARIOUS ASIDE: Here in Nederland, there are some herbs and seasonings that are sold via both their common Dutch names and the Dutchification of their original Indonesian names.
For example. The Dutch word koriander (coriander/cilantro) is ketoembar in Dutchified Indonesian (ketumbar in Indonesian). Komijn (cumin) is djinten. Citroengras (lemongrass) is sereh. Gember (ginger) is djahe. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Roun' here you see the Dutch names a whole lot more often, and frankly that's OK cause the Indonesian names are (at least to my multilingually-challenged mind) unrememberable.
Case in point. The Dutch word for turmeric is kurkuma. The Indonesian is koenjit. There is also something called kentjoer, which, while it looks very much like fresh turmeric when it's in a little frozen container way in the back of a friendly Hindustani's freezer....it is not turmeric. No, it's a variety of galangal whose primary distinguishing feature is that it looks exactly like turmeric when it's in someone's freezer.
The point of this endlessly diverting aside: I did not in fact buy a bunch of turmeric/koenjit today. I bought two different kinds of galangal, or.....yes, kentjoer. Cue the violins.
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