Ginger bread anyone?

I have a new best friend. She is called ‘Tara’ and comes from Nepal. She is most elegant, a svelte figure with an arched back and strong legs; she would be right at home on a high fashion runway. She has a bright complexion, exotic looks and smells faintly of gardenia, she could have been the queen of Sheba. She has a very flighty personality yet she is a completely devoted character; she is a ginger!
I bought my first ornamental ginger two years ago from the wonderful Architectural Plants nursery in Horsham. I had already admired tropical gingers but I hadn’t realized that there were many hardy ones we can grow here in our mild temperate climate.
I already knew of the diminutive Roscoea, a pretty plant indeed but not one that makes a great statement in the garden. It does have the exotic look of the family Zingiberaceae with its large fleshy orchid-like blooms and strappy leaves clasping the stem, and really I do love it, but it cannot compare to its larger relatives. I discovered the ginger family through its tropical species. I had encountered them in my travels to Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore (where a whole section of the Botanical Gardens is devoted to them). I also learned a lot about them when staying and working with friends in North Queensland three years ago. It was Suzie and Alan who introduced me to their native backscratcher ginger, Tapenochilos annanassae, the beehive ginger, Zingiber spectabile and most exciting and impressive of all, the stately Torch ginger, Etlingera elatior. This last one I recognized as ‘La Rose de Porcelaine’ from a photograph I had seen many years before in a French gardening magazine. It had caught my imagination as a teenager and it was somewhat unreal an experience to see it in the flesh, also perhaps because its large waxy flower didn't look quite real in itself.
Apart from these beauties, I had also acquainted with gingers in my kitchen. Apart from the ginger root (Zingiber officinale) which I use profusely in my cooking (delicious grated on a toast with melted cheddar on top - I promise, try it!), there is also cardamom (the seeds of Elettaria cardamomum), galangal (the root of Alpinia galanga) and tumeric (the powdered root of Curcuma longa), to use as spices. I think cardamom is grossely underused. It has a most wonderful citrus-meet-cedar-meet-ginger fragrance. It is one of the mysterious spices that gives Indian food its unique flavour. Here, I use it mostly in sweet cooking as I think its lemoney taste goes well with fruits and cakes. I first discovered it through a poppy seed bread recipe and have been faithful to it since. See what you make of it:


Poppy seed bread

125 g granulated sugar
125 g light brown sugar
3 large eggs (or 4 medium)
140 g spelt or wholemeal flour
140 g plain flour
250 mL vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed)
125 mL milk (soya is fine)
75 g poppy seeds
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. each of cinnamon, crushed cardamom seeds
½ tsp. allspice, powdered ginger

oven: 350F/180C

Mix the sugars with the eggs. Add the oil in a slow and steady trickle, beating as you go along. Mix the flour with the baking powder the poppy seeds and the spices, then incorporate this mix into the mixture, alternating with the milk. Put in an extra large bread pan (30 cm X 15 cm, no smaller otherwise the edge of the cake burns before the centre is cooked) and bake until it is soft and tender in the middle, approximately 60 minutes.

Sorry we are getting sidetracked, the belly takes over the brain so fast sometimes! I was about to extol the virtues of the hardy gingers, not so much for their edible properties as for their ornemamental ones - although - before I do this, I feel the urge to mention just one last edible ginger, a hardy one this time and one that I have been growing for a couple of years with great success. I visited Japan a few years ago and for a month experienced its culinary exoticism. On one occasion I was presented a pale pink teardrop-shaped sliced pickle which was absolutely delicious, similar to pickled ginger we get in the west, but with a more fruity taste and a crunchier texture. I enquired about it and was told it was 'myoga' - as I don't speak Japanese, this could have meant anything to me. I was eager to find out more and seeing my vivid interest, the host took me to the garden to show me the plant. It looked just like a dwarf ginger but had no flowers, or at least it didn't seem to...until my host pointed them out, hiding amongst the foliage, just coming out of the ground. I recognized the shape of the pickle and realized that that was what I had been eating, the flower buds! I didn't hear of myoga after that for a long time, I hadn't been able to source it upon returning here and had not researched it further. Then two years ago, whilst perusing through the list of the excellent nusery Crûg Farm, I cam across it, Zingiber myoga! It wasn't long before I had paid them a visit and bought myself a nice pot full of it. It said on the label that the hardiness was unknown, but I knew it would survive here, for when I had seen in Japan I was in Hakodate, Hokkaido, where temperatures can drop to -15C. Not only did it survive the last two winters, it thrived (like other gingers, it positively romps away when happy) and I now have three large patches of it giving me, as I write this, my very own myoga to pickle in rice wine vinegar - how so special!
Sorry, once again we are neglecting our hardy ornemental gingers! If 'Tara' is the most impressive of all the hardy Hedychiums, there are many more to excite our senses. I don't grow many others at the moment, only H. flavescens, which hasn't flowered being in its first year (gingers do grow fast, but usually need a settling period before they begin flowering). Tony Schilling, who introduced 'Tara' from a wild collection in Nepal also brought back a lovely plant he called 'Stephen' (right). I don't grow it but have been told it does very well in the United Kingdom. I used to have H. densiflorum 'Assam Orange' in my previous garden, but the rabbits found out how tasty it was when I was on leave and ate my small clump, root and all. It is quite similar in colour to 'Tara' but it has slenderer spikes. It is different enough that I should really like to have it again.
Then there is H. yunnanense, which I have admired at the entrance of the RHS Wisley but haven't encountered for sale yet. It looks similar to the tropical butterfly ginger, H. coronarium but is hardier and freer flowering in a cool climate. It doesn't have the same powerful scent but a subtle exotic fragrance nonetheless.
Kew Gardens has a really nice collection of rarer hardy gingers by the herbarium and this makes me want to try and source more for next year. What about you? Ginger beer anyone?