Jahe — Ginger

Ginger, Zingiber officinale, is a cultivated rhizome of the Austronesian world and has been grown in the islands of Southeast Asia since long before written record. It was among the spices that Indonesian and Asian traders carried west, and Tomé Pires in the Suma Oriental lists ginger among the goods of the Malay trade. In the Moluccas, the Fire Islands of Eleanor Ford's book, it stands beside clove and nutmeg as an everyday kitchen root, while in Java it belongs to the drinking tradition of the wedang and to the jamu trade. Every household in the archipelago keeps it, and it is carried by home cooks, market women and street vendors alike.

Jahe is the knobbed, buff-skinned rhizome of Zingiber officinale, with pale yellow, fibrous, juicy flesh and a sharp, resinous scent. Three types are known in Indonesian markets: jahe gajah, the large, mild, plump rhizome; jahe emprit, the smaller, firmer, more pungent type; and jahe merah, the small red-skinned type. It is used young and thin-skinned for tenderness, or mature for sharpness, and is cut in thick coins, bruised whole with the flat of a knife, cut into fine matchsticks, or pounded and ground into bumbu pastes. It is distinct from galangal, Alpinia galanga, and kencur, Kaempferia galanga, which are separate rhizomes with different uses.

Ginger is eaten with fish, offal, duck, chicken and other meats whose strong smell or richness it cuts, and it goes into soups, curries and sambals alongside shallot, garlic and chilli. It is drunk as wedang jahe, a hot infusion sweetened with gula jawa or gula aren, which the tradition takes in the cool of evening or in the rains. The structural reason is its sharp pungency, which lifts fat and cleans the palate, and which the sweetness of palm sugar rounds in the cup.