I bought it at a Vietnamese supermarket. Yes, I've googled to no avail.

I bought this at the store, as it was CLEARLY ginger root. I think I
know what ginger root looks like.

Does anybody know what "cu ghieng" means in Vietnamese. It's the
spitting image of ginger! :-)
--
///---

In article 2006123117245316807-somewhere@sunnycalif,
f says...
I bought it at a Vietnamese supermarket. Yes, I've googled to no avail.

I bought this at the store, as it was CLEARLY ginger root. I think I
know what ginger root looks like.

Does anybody know what "cu ghieng" means in Vietnamese. It's the
spitting image of ginger! :-)

It means ginger. In Vietnamese.

If you think know what ginger looks like, and you CLEARLY think you
bought some ginger, you may ACTUALLY have purchased some ginger. What's
the PROBLEM?

ENJOY. Happy NEW YEAR.

Bob

Well, I don't know. If it looks like ginger and smells like ginger and
tastes like ginger, it might be ginger, but then again it might be a
banana or a coconut. It would be hard to tell without scientific
analysis.

Hello, Gerry!
You wrote on Sun, 31 Dec 2006 17:24:53 -0800:

G I bought this at the store, as it was CLEARLY ginger root.
G I think I know what ginger root looks like.

G Does anybody know what "cu ghieng" means in Vietnamese. It's
G the spitting image of ginger! :-)

I've never come across the name before but, if it is not
actually ginger, it is probably Greater or Lesser Galangal
(Kaempferia rotunda Jacq. or K. galanga L) according to Gernot
Katzer's Spice pages. The plants are related to ginger and taste
similar tho' not identical. I have some and it is labelled
"Dried Rhizome"!

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not

On 2006-12-31 18:05:50 -0800, yetanotherBob said:

Apparently I wasn't clear:

I bought it at a Vietnamese supermarket. Yes, I've googled to no avail.

I bought this at the store, as it was CLEARLY ginger root. I think I
know what ginger root looks like.

Does anybody know what "cu ghieng" means in Vietnamese. It's the
spitting image of ginger! :-)

It means ginger. In Vietnamese.
If you think know what ginger looks like, and you CLEARLY think you
bought some ginger, you may ACTUALLY have purchased some ginger.
What's the PROBLEM?

The problem is that it isn't ginger. It tastes vaguely like a
Christmas tree smells, and has a mild horseradish like burn to it. On
the other hand my wife though it was HOT and spit it out pronto. I
kept trying different parts of it attempting to find some heat, but
could not. And are tastes are not so dissimilar.

In any case it is not wasabi, it is not what is traditionally called
"ginger" in Chinese and American cooking, and it is not straight-ahead
horseradish. It tastes nothing like any of these.

So, no one has any familiarity with it, I assume?
--
///---

On 2007-01-01 20:02:02 -0800, "Walter Rhee" said:

Sounds like galanga/galangal. The Latin name is Alpinia galanga
(Southeast Asian galanga). There are other species of galanga, Alpinia
is the genus. It belongs to the ginger family AFAIK. Used primarily in
Thai cooking, Vietnamese do use it somewhat, but not as extensively as
the Thais do. eg. Thai curries.

That's the stuff. Thanks everso to you and James Silverton. My wife
said she thought it might be galanga used for Thai food, but I hadn't
pursued it yet.

This seemed to cinch it as it had a picture as well:

http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Alpi_gal.html

There was no mention, specifically, of "Cu Ghieng", but there's no
reason to think that the supermarket really knew what they were doing
with the labeling.
--
///---

In article om,
"Walter Rhee" wrote:

Sounds like galanga/galangal.

Probably true. Looks a lot like ginger, but a bit more complex in
flavor. Often used in southeastern asian cooking.

Trivia: Since galangal seems rare and exotic to westerners, Asian
grocers can charge us exorbitant prices for it. Hence it's nickname:

"cu ghieng" is just the Vietnamese pronunciation of "ka ching!"

;-)

--
Julian Vrieslander

Galangal aka blue ginger:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galangal

Pictures:

http://images.google.com/images?q=ga...-a&sa=N&tab=wi

I didn't know about that, and so much for my very bad jokes...

:-O

Gerry - I love those giant Viet and Korean supermarkets in your area!

On 2007-01-02 02:04:59 -0800, Julian Vrieslander
said:

In article om,
"Walter Rhee" wrote:

Sounds like galanga/galangal.

Probably true. Looks a lot like ginger, but a bit more complex in
flavor. Often used in southeastern asian cooking.

Trivia: Since galangal seems rare and exotic to westerners, Asian
grocers can charge us exorbitant prices for it. Hence it's nickname:

"cu ghieng" is just the Vietnamese pronunciation of "ka ching!"

My wife noted in an Madhur Jaffrey's "World-of-the-East Vegetarian
Cooking" ('81) that only dried incarnations of galanga were available
in the USA then.

It was $4.99 a pound. We got a big ol' clump of it for $1.75.
--
///---

On 2007-01-02 07:31:41 -0800, said:

Galangal aka blue ginger:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galangal

Pictures:

http://images.google.com/images?q=ga...-a&sa=N&tab=wi

I

didn't know about that, and so much for my very bad jokes...

:-O

Gerry - I love those giant Viet and Korean supermarkets in your area!

No kidding. Recently we've started buying whole fishes there. We have
the whittle it into appropriate sizes and get 5 meals out of a Black
Cod for 6 bucks. At first this was a bit intimidating, but we're
looking at more interesting fish now. God knows they have enough there
to experiment with.

Last week at another new jumbo Vietnamese supermarket I noted many
types of tinned corned beef. Maybe 10 or 12 different kinds. ALL of
them from Brazil. With Vietnamese and English on one side and Arabic
and "Halal" printed on the other. Orange County--a hell of a town!
--
///---

"Gerry" wrote in message
news:2007010208110011272-somewhere@sunnycalif...

Last week at another new jumbo Vietnamese supermarket I noted
many types of tinned corned beef. Maybe 10 or 12 different
kinds. ALL of them from Brazil. With Vietnamese and English
on one side and Arabic and "Halal" printed on the other.
Orange County--a hell of a town!

It's interesting that Asian supermarkets around here seem to be
the last hold-outs for a selection of canned corned beef and
"spam".


--
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

In article , "James
Silverton" not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not says...

It's interesting that Asian supermarkets around here seem to be
the last hold-outs for a selection of canned corned beef and
"spam".


Possibly becase many of them also serve the local Latino population, who
use a lot of the canned meats in everyday cooking. Most of the bigger
Asian markets I've been in (Lotte, Korean Corner, International Market,
etc.) around here also have a sizeable Goya and/or Herdez selection,
along with various other Latino goodies scattered through the store.
Often many Latin folks on the staff, as well.

Bob

On 2007-01-02 08:15:55 -0800, "James Silverton"
not.jim.silverton.at.comcast.not said:

"Gerry" wrote in message
news:2007010208110011272-somewhere@sunnycalif...

Last week at another new jumbo Vietnamese supermarket I noted many
types of tinned corned beef. Maybe 10 or 12 different kinds. ALL of
them from Brazil. With Vietnamese and English on one side and Arabic
and "Halal" printed on the other. Orange County--a hell of a town!

It's interesting that Asian supermarkets around here seem to be the
last hold-outs for a selection of canned corned beef and "spam".

Curiously they also have quite a list of vegetarian potted quazi-meats
of faux-chicken and faux-beef flavorings, with the prime component
being white beans. I bought a couple just to find out. We'll see.
--
///---

Gerry wrote:
On 2007-01-01 20:02:02 -0800, "Walter Rhee" said:

Sounds like galanga/galangal. The Latin name is Alpinia galanga
(Southeast Asian galanga). There are other species of galanga, Alpinia
is the genus. It belongs to the ginger family AFAIK. Used primarily in
Thai cooking, Vietnamese do use it somewhat, but not as extensively as
the Thais do. eg. Thai curries.

That's the stuff. Thanks everso to you and James Silverton. My wife
said she thought it might be galanga used for Thai food, but I hadn't
pursued it yet.

This seemed to cinch it as it had a picture as well:

http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Alpi_gal.html

There was no mention, specifically, of "Cu Ghieng", but there's no
reason to think that the supermarket really knew what they were doing
with the labeling.

Củ with a comma over the "u" is Vietnamese for tuber or root. Ginger is
củ gừng. Not sure what the "ghieng" would be - that's not showing up in
my VN-English dictionary.

Geoff wrote:

Củ with a comma over the "u" is Vietnamese for tuber or root. Ginger is
củ gừng. Not sure what the "ghieng" would be - that's not showing up in
my VN-English dictionary.

I simply suspect it's a misspelling for "rieng".
"Củ ri�ng" could then be "galanga root".

--
Gernot
Anharmonic Thermochemistry: http://bthec11.uni-graz.at/~katzer
Everything about Herbs & Spices: http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl
Alles ueber Kraeuter & Gewuerze: http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/germ
Texte ueber Tolkiens Werk: http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/tolkien.html