By Joel Denker

I dug into a hearty curried chicken dinner, which arrived with tender cabbage, carrots, and green pepper and a side of rice and peas at Tobago’s Catering and Cafe,  a storefront Caribbean eatery in Shaw. I ordered a pineapple ginger drink, a house specialty, to complement my meal. The fresh ginger in the invigorating juice crept up on me. Soon a pleasant afterburn filled my mouth.

Owner and chef Antoinette Charles is determined to introduce ginger to her customers. Rather than pushing the more pungent ginger beer, she decided to woo them with a softer drink. “Pineapple is there to add a complementary flavor,” Ms. Charles says. The fruit juice holds back the “immediate sting” of the ginger.

The chef, who previously worked in the investment and real estate fields, was raised in Trinidad where “ginger is like a staple. We grew up with it.”(Ms. Charles named her restaurant after neighboring Tobago to pay tribute to the less well known island}. The spice, she points out, goes naturally with Caribbean food. “Any item you’re cooking, you add a pinch for flavor.”

For Antoinette Charles, ginger also makes an excellent tonic. “If I’m not feeling 100%, I drink a cup of freshly grated ginger tea sweetened with honey. It’s a remedy I would use before trying something concocted in a laboratory.”

Ginger, one of the most ancient of all spices, was a relative latecomer to the Americas. Native to South China or Southeast Asia or India—or to all of them, depending on the authority you consult—the plant is cloaked in mystery. Commentators debate the origin of its name. Some say it come from a Sanskrit word, singabera, meaning “horned or antlered thing.” That’s an appealing explanation, but probably not accurate. More likely the name derives from a South Indian word.

Like most of us, I suspect, I knew little about the plant. We think of ginger as a root but in fact the rhizome is an underground stem. The tropical spice, which thrives with high humidity and rainfall, is best described by Bruce Cost, a leading expert. “It grows up to three feet tall with thin, pointed, nine-inch leaves and small yellow to yellow-green flowers with touches of purple. The rhizome creeps as it grows along by sprouting new stalks.” The oils in the knobs, or “hands,” create ginger’s intense fragrance.

Ginger is one of the few spices that does not grow by seed. It is propagated by planting small pieces of the stem. Cultivating it requires planning and effort, a sign of how much the spice has always been prized.

The mature ginger sold in the supermarket is just the spice’s most familiar form. I discovered spring or baby ginger in a lively salad served at the Burma Restaurant. The small pink slips of the stem, which are tangy but not hot, are tossed with cabbage, carrots, sesame seeds, onions, and peanuts.

Ginger, whose family also includes turmeric and cardamom, won a wide following. The Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Assyrians, Egyptians, among others, were converts. The spice came to be treasured both as a food and a drug. Its medicinal virtue—the ability to create body heat—was the very quality that made ginger an exhilarating seasoning.

“The plant which repels dampness and wind.” The earliest definition of ginger in the Chinese language sings the praise of a healing spice, praise that will be echoed throughout its history. Hot ginger, the Chinese believed, warmed the body and in the process warded off chills and flatulence. The tonic perked up the appetite and fueled the sex drive. Generally, ginger helped keep the system in balance.

It was said to ease digestion and to cure food poisoning. The Chinese were early advocates of what has become modern wisdom—that ginger counteracts nausea. Sailors from the kingdom took fresh ginger on their voyages to prevent seasickness. The Chinese “plant pot herbs, vegetables, and ginger in wooden troughs” on their ships, the Arab writer Ibn Batuta reported in the 14th century.

So sharp and pure was its fragrance that ginger was considered heavenly. The spice “puts a person in contact with the spiritual effulgences,” the oldest Chinese pharmacopeia stated. Ginger also cleansed the body so as not to offend the Gods. It was stored in the tombs of royals to provide them nourishment in the afterlife.

Ginger was expected to refresh man’s food, to banish distasteful odors from the kitchen and dining table. The aroma “eliminates the stench of raw flesh,” the poet Chang Heng wrote. Ginger could also elevate even the freshest food. Scenting steamed fish with ginger and spring onion, a classic Cantonese technique, was supposed to produce the cleanest, non-fishy aroma.

The Chinese recognized ginger’s affinity with sweets. They sweetened it first with honey and later with sugar to make a treat that was both tasty and good for the digestion. Sugar syrup and crystal sugar were used as preservatives and as vehicles for trading the spice long distances.

Ginger reached Europe during the Middle Ages when canisters of the spice graced many a noble’s table. After pepper, ginger was the most coveted of the Oriental spices. The aristocracy showed off their wealth and rank by displays of the luxuries. Spices were collected and offered as presents.

The Europeans also desired spices because they were exciting and invigorating. They pepped up an otherwise pedestrian dish. The most popular sauces in 14th century Europe all relied on ginger, the “most protean of spices,” as food historian Bruno Laurioux called it: ginger and saffron; ginger, cloves, and cardamom; ginger and cinnamon.

The Europeans found its fire intoxicating. “Ginger shall be hot i’ th’ mouth,” Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night. The spice was also erotic. Galangal, a Southeast Asian ginger the Europeans adopted, could “help those weak in the sports of Venus,” Culpepper, the English herbalist preached.

In England, where Roman soldiers had probably transported it by the llth century, ginger’s vibrant associations added new expressions to the language. As a noun, it would mean vitality or liveliness. To “ginger up” was to give life to. The English word for a knob of ginger—“race” —was the root of “racy.”

Like the Chinese, the Europeans had faith in ginger’s curative powers. King Henry V of England urged his subjects to sweat out the plague with doses of ginger. The physicians at the medieval school of medicine in Salerno, Italy explained illness as the result of excessive cold and moisture:

Within the stomach, loins, and in the lung

Praise of hot ginger rightly may be sung,

It quenches thirst, revives, excites the brain

And in old age awakes young love again.

Since of all the spices it meshed best with ginger, apothecaries and physicians administered it in candied form to their patients. A variety of European confections were built on the same foundation. Gingerbread, the most celebrated of them, first achieved fame in court society. The cakes pictured the lords in all their glorious finery. The sweet got its name, Bruce Cost notes, from gingerbrati, the name for medicated ginger pastes in 13th century England.

The Europeans were keen on fortifying their drinks with ginger, an idea that goes back as far as Hippocrates, who recommended adding spices, like ginger, to wines. The original liqueurs and cordials were infused with ginger to promote health.

The British instinctively added ginger to their beer. Until World War 2, Cost reveals, English pubs offered their patrons ground ginger to spike their ale or porter.

The saga of ginger takes us back to the Caribbean and to where we started at the Tobago’s eatery. The Spaniards took ginger to the Caribbean in the 16th century, where the islanders started cultivating the plant and incorporating the spice in their cooking. When the English ousted the Spanish, they brought along their ginger beer habit. Instead of the dried ginger used in Britain, the West Indians livened up their ginger tea, alcoholic and non-alcoholic ginger beer, with the fresh stem.

As had happened in so many other cultures, ginger developed into folk medicine in the Caribbean. If you feel a cold coming on or are just feeling a little low, some of the bracing pineapple ginger juice at Tobago’s Cafe might be just the remedy.

Note:If you want to pursue the subject further, Bruce Cost’s invaluable Ginger East to West, which helped me immensely, is a good source.

 

Originally published in The InTowner: http://intowner.com/food-in-the-hood/