I’m
a bit of a ginger beer connoisseur, and I just tasted the best ginger beer I’ve
ever had. And the best part? I made it
myself.
A
few weeks ago, Ming Wei pointed to a bed in the garden with a few wilted stalks
of what looked like grass. “Dig around in there, the ginger is definitely ready
to come out.” I took a digging fork to the bed hesitantly, not knowing exactly
where to look for the spicy root. After a few minutes clearing away soil, I
found that the base of each nearly lifeless stem led to an underground treasure
trove. The top of each bulbous root was about 10 inches below the soil and
extended at least eight more inches into the ground
This particular bed of ginger was
planted last March, so it had been in the ground for 10 months. Ideally, the
ginger would have been harvested in December - after 8 months and before the
rainy season – but Ming Wei had a particularly busy winter, so in the ground it
stayed for a couple extra months. And it got HUGE.
I
had to be careful to keep each root intact so that we could replant segments of
the healthiest-looking ones for the next crop (Ginger can’t be planted by seed
because, due to over-breeding, it won’t actually produce a flower with viable
seeds. It must be propagated manually by using root-stalk cuttings). This
entailed some serious digging. I ended up excavating at least a 1-foot radius
hole around each plant in order to expose the entire root and then carefully
unearth it. It was a bit like digging for buried treasure (except even more fun
than pretending on the beach as a kid…because there actually was treasure!) and we ended up with an
over-flowing bucket of the knobby roots.
What
to do with all that ginger? Candied ginger, ginger liqueur, ginger-kraut…we
tried them all. But the most successful of our experiments by far was the
ginger beer. Crisp and fizzy with a nice bite, we’re convinced our homemade
beverage would go for top dollar.
Stay
tuned for part two – the process.
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