Ginger root, a hard, craggy-looking food in the produce section of most supermarkets, provides robust flavor as well as medicinal value to so many foods.
Natural Healing
A simple remedy for headaches involves boiling several peeled, chopped pieces of the hard, yellow root, and then drinking the tea that results. With a bit of patience, natural healing practitioners can cure simple headache pain as well as stomach upset, and if persistent and determined to avoid man-made medications, they may as a result successfully avoid aspirin or other over the counter or narcotic pain relievers for many years. Curative fresh ginger tea also tastes especially good throughout the relatively cold months of what we still know as the season of winter.
Hearty Bean Dishes
On the culinary side of things, ginger offers a wonderful rich and tangy flavor for stir frying as well as bean based soups and stews, not to mention fresh gingerbread; when taken seriously, this incredibly versatile food can take health-conscious eaters anywhere. For the New Year, add cooked black-eyed peas (a cup and a half dried) with however much of their cooking liquid is desired, to ginger, oregano, salt and pepper that have been sautéed in one tablespoon olive oil; then finish with the zest and juice of half a lemon, plus an additional two tablespoons of olive oil.
In addition, bean dishes in other forms, especially ones using the small green mung bean such as kichadi (a soup with ginger and vegetables), make hearty vegetarian eating an exciting adventure. For a filling mung bean pancake, dicing ginger in a food processor, before adding soaked, split mung dal and processing into a paste, makes a delicious savory batter when the whole thing is thinned with baking soda, turmeric, chilies, chopped fresh parsley or cilantro and water (and onion and garlic if allowed). Once fried in ghee or vegetable oil, these are delicious when wrapped around steamed vegetables, especially cauliflower florets, and topped with sour cream and/or flavorful chutney.
Stir-frying
For a great, easy way to give extra zip to Chinese style vegetables, chop or grate ginger with celery and bell pepper to get the stir fry going in style with a tablespoon or two of heated sesame oil. Unless onion and garlic have been taken off of your list for whatever reason, add them first as well. Once these basics of building a flavorful mélange have begun to caramelize and blend, the longer-cooking vegetables like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, etc., can go in one at a time, for several minutes each. After that, add some liquid (vegetable broth or water), spread any leafy greens and possibly tofu over the top, and steam for ten minutes. Finish the cooking process with two or three tablespoons of either your favorite soy sauce or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos, and any nuts or seeds, or bean sprouts for that matter, to add crunch.
These stir fries with ginger in the base are so flexible and easy, as long as you have time, or a few helping hands, to chop the vegetables. When eaten over cooked whole grains, such as millet, quinoa, brown rice, or any rice blend with wild rice and other varieties, a more complete and satisfying meal for a vegetarian would be hard to find.
Fresh ginger is a panacea to vegetarians looking for exciting flavor as well as amazingly natural detoxification. Have fun with the adventurous, curative root known as ginger!
References:
Brown, Edward Espe. The Tassajara Recipe Book.
Jaffrey, Madhur. World of the East: Vegetarian Cooking.
Robertson, Laurel. Laurel’s Kitchen.
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