Rhizomes - Ginger : Introduction Culinary uses

Young ginger roots are juicy and fleshy with a very mild taste. They are often pickled in vinegar or sherry as a snack or just cooked as an ingredient in many dishes. Mature ginger roots are fibrous and nearly dry. The juice from old ginger roots is extremely potent and is often used as a spice in Chinese cuisine to cover up other strong odors and flavors such as in seafood and mutton.

Ginger is also made into candy, is used as a flavoring for cookies, crackers and cake, and is the main flavor in ginger ale, a sweet, carbonated, non-alcoholic beverage, as well as the similar, but somewhat spicier beverage ginger beer. A ginger-flavored liqueur called Canton is produced in the Guangdong province of China; it is advertised to be based on a recipe created for the rulers of the Qing Dynasty and made from six different varieties of ginger. Green ginger wine is produced in the United Kingdom traditionally Crabbie's and Stone's, in a green glass bottle. Ginger is also used as a spice added to hot coffee.

In Japan, ginger is pickled to make beni shoga and gari or grated and used raw on tofu or noodles.

In Western cuisine, ginger is traditionally restricted to sweet foods, such as ginger ale, gingerbread, ginger snaps (a type of cookie), ginger cake and ginger biscuits.

Powdered dry ginger (ground ginger) is typically to add spiciness to gingerbread and other recipes. Ground and fresh ginger taste quite different and ground ginger is a particularly poor substitute for fresh ginger. Fresh ginger can be successfully substituted for ground ginger and should be done at a ratio of 6 parts fresh for 1 part ground. You generally achieve better results by substituting only half the ground ginger for fresh ginger.

In Myanmar, ginger is used in a salad dish called gyin-tho, which consists of shredded ginger preserved in oil, and a variety of nuts and seeds.

Ginger has a sialagogue action, stimulating the production of saliva.

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Rhizomes - Ginger : Introduction

Ginger root is used extensively as a spice in many if not most cuisines of the world. Though called a root, it is actually the rhizome of the monocotyledonous perennial plant Zingiber officinale.

The English word ginger is derived from Indian language.


Origin and distribution
Image

The ginger plant is a cultigen that does not occur in the wild; it is native to India and China. In antiquity, it was cultivated in Asia and Africa. Today, it is grown in large scale all over the tropics. The most expensive and highest quality varieties generally come from Australia, southern India, and Jamaica, while most mass market ginger is grown in China. India has a large ginger production for the domestic market.


Chemistry

Ginger contains up to 3% of an essential oil which causes the fragrance of the spice. The main constituents are sesquiterpenoids with (-)-zingiberene as the main component. Lesser amounts of other sesquiterpenoids (β-sesquiphellandrene, bisabolene and farnesene) and a small monoterpenoid fraction (β-phelladrene, cineol, and citral) have also been identified.

The pungent taste of ginger is due to nonvolatile phenylpropanoids (particularly gingerol and zingerone) and diarylheptanoids (gingeroles and shoagoles); the latter are more pungent and form from the former when ginger is dried. Cooking ginger transforms gingerol into zingerone, which is less pungent and has a spicy-sweet aroma.[2] None of these pungent chemicals are related to capsaicin, the principal hot constituent of chile pepper.


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Potassium hydroxide

The chemical compound potassium hydroxide, (KOH) sometimes known as caustic potash, potassa, potash lye, and potassium hydrate, is a metallic base. It is a very alkaline compound used in agriculture to correct the pH of acidic soils. It can also be used as a fungicide or even an herbicide.

Potassium hydroxide
Potassium hydroxide
 

Uses

It is a major industrial chemical used as a base in a wide variety of chemical processes. It is used as a catalyst in reactions like the production of biodiesel by transesterification. Advantages of using potassium hydroxide (KOH) and not sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in biodiesel production include: NaOH "clumps" and KOH does not, KOH disolves faster in methanol, the resulting glycerin is thinner using KOH and therefore less likely to plug up the plumbing and pumps, and the glycerin is more biodegradable so it's better for composting.

Some uses of KOH include acrylate ester copolymer coating, defoaming agents used in the manufacture of paper, formulation aid for food, pH control agent, polyethylene resins, textile processing.

Other uses include in veterinary medicine in disbudding calves horns and to dissolve scales and hair; in human medicine, to diagnose fungal infections and as a wart and cuticle solvent; manufacture of cleansers. This type of compound is also used in washing powders, some denture cleaners, non-phosphate detergents, and drain or pipe cleaners.

A very significant use of KOH in terms of significance to the average home consumer is that alkaline batteries use an aqueous solution of KOH as an electrolyte. Thus, potassium hydroxide helps to power flashlights, smoke detectors, and other battery powered household items.

It is also an anisotropic etchant of silicon, exposing octahedral planes. This technique can create pyramids and regularly-shaped etch pits for uses such as MEMS.

Food preparation

Food uses of lye include washing or chemical peeling of fruits and vegetables, chocolate and cocoa processing, caramel color production, poultry scalding, soft drink processing, and thickening ice cream. Olives are often soaked in lye to soften them, while pretzels and German lye rolls are glazed with a lye solution before baking to make them crisp.

Lye is used to make the Scandinavian delicacy known as lutefisk (from lutfisk, "lye fish"). Cod is soaked in lye to a jelly-like consistency, then served with bacon fat, potatoes, brunost sauce and mushy peas. Hominy is dried maize (corn) kernels reconstituted by soaking in lye-



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Plants : Mustard Plant - Introduction

 

The mustards are several plant species in the genera Brassica and Sinapis whose proverbially tiny mustard seeds are used as a spice and, by grinding and mixing them with water, vinegar or other liquids, are turned into a condiment also known as mustard. The seeds are also pressed to make mustard oil, and the edible leaves can be eaten as mustard greens.
Mustard Plant

Mild white mustard (Sinapis hirta) grows wild in North Africa, the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe and has spread farther by long cultivation; brown or Indian mustard (B. juncea), originally from the foothills of the Himalaya, is grown commercially in the UK, Canada and the US; black mustard (B. nigra) in Argentina, Chile, the US and some European countries. Canada grows 90% of all the mustard seed for the international market.

In addition to the mustards, the genus Brassica also includes cabbages, cauliflower, rapeseed and turnips.
Mustard Seeds

Although the varieties of mustard are well-established crops in Hellenistic and Roman times, which leads to the assumption that it was brought into cultivation at an earlier time, Zohary and Hopf note that "there are almost no archeological records available for any of these crops." Wild forms of mustard and its relatives the radish and turnip can be found over west Asia and Europe, suggesting that their domestication took place somewhere in that area. However Zohary and Hopf conclude, "Suggestions as to the origins of these plants are necessarily based on linguistic considerations."[1]

There has been recent research into varieties of mustards that have a high oil content for use in the production of biodiesel, a renewable liquid fuel similar to diesel fuel. The biodiesel made from mustard oil has good cold flow properties and cetane ratings. The leftover meal after pressing out the oil has also been found to be an effective pesticide.

An interesting genetic relationship between many species of mustard have been observed, and is described as the Triangle of U.

 



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Plants - Soybeans : Physical characteristics

Soybeans occur in various sizes, and in several hull or seed coat colors, including black, brown, blue, yellow, and mottled. The hull of the mature bean is hard, water resistant, and protects the cotyledon and hypocotyl (or "germ") from damage. If the seed coat is "cracked" the seed will not germinate. The scar, visible on the seed coat, is called the hilum (colors include black, brown, buff, gray and yellow) and at one end of the hilum is the micropyle, or small opening in the seed coat which can allow the absorption of water.

It is a remarkable fact that seeds such as soybeans, containing very high levels of soy protein, can undergo dessication yet survive and revive after water absorption. A. Carl Leopold, son of Aldo Leopold, set out twenty years ago to answer this very question at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University. Studying the survival of soybeans and corn he found each to have a range of soluble sugars carbohydrate protecting the seed's cell viability. Patents were awarded to him in the early 1990s on techniques for protecting "biological membranes" and proteins in the dry state.

In January of 2006 the FDA (it was approved earlier in Europe) approved a dried insulin powder, dispensed into the lungs through a hand-held inhaler that, for 21 million Americans suffering from diabetes, will make treatment much easier by eliminating the need for daily injections. This product, based upon Leopold's insights and techniques is named Exubera and will be available from Pfizer sometime in mid-2006.





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Plants - Introduction

Plants are a major group of living things including familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, and ferns. About 350,000 species of plants have been estimated to exist. As of 2004, some 287,655 species had been identified, of which 258,650 are flowering.

Aristotle divided all living things between plants, which generally do not move or have sensory organs, and animals. In Linnaeus' system, these became the Kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Plantae) and Animalia. Since then, it has become clear that the Plantae as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these are still often considered plants in many contexts. Indeed, any attempt to match "plant" with a single taxon is doomed to fail, because plant is a vaguely defined concept unrelated to the presumed phylogenic concepts on which modern taxonomy is based.

Plants - Soybeans : Introduction     

The Soybean (U.S.) or Soya bean (UK) is a species of legume, native to eastern Asia. It is an annual plant, which may vary in growth habit and height. It may grow prostrate, not growing above 20 cm (7.8 inches); up to stiffly erect plants growing to 2 meters (6.5 feet).
Glycine max

The pods, stems, and leaves are covered with fine brown or gray pubescence. The leaves are trifoliate (sometimes with 5 leaflets), the leaflets 6-15 cm (2-6 inches) long and 2-7 cm (1-3 inches) broad; they fall before the seeds are mature. The small, inconspicuous, self-fertile flowers are borne in the axil of the leaf and are either white or purple; The fruit is a hairy pod that grow in clusters of 3-5, with each pod 3-8 cm (1-3 inches) long and usually containing 2-4 (rarely more) seeds 5-11 mm in diameter.

Like corn and some other crops of long domestication, the relationship of the modern soybean to wild-growing species can no longer be traced with any degree of certainty. It is a cultural variety (a cultigen) with a very large number of cultivars. However, it is known that the progenitor of the modern soybean was a vine-like plant, that grew prone on the ground.

Beans are classed as pulses whereas soybeans are classed as oilseeds. The word soy is derived from the Japanese word shoyu (soy sauce/soya sauce).



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Plants - Growth : Introduction

It is a common misconception that most of the solid material in a plant is taken from the soil, when in fact almost all of it is actually taken from the atmosphere. Through a process known as photosynthesis, plants use the energy in sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into simple sugars. These sugars are then used as building blocks and form the main structural component of the plant. Plants rely on soil primarily for water (in quantitative terms), but also obtain nitrogen, phosphorus and other crucial elemental nutrients.

Simple plants like algae may have short life spans as individuals, but their populations are commonly seasonal. Other plants may be organized according to their seasonal growth pattern:

    * Annual: live and reproduce within one growing season.
    * Biennial: live for two growing seasons; usually reproduce in second year.
    * Perennial: live for many growing seasons; continue to reproduce once mature.

Among the vascular plants, perennials include both evergreens that keep their leaves the entire year, and deciduous plants which lose their leaves for some part. In temperate and boreal climates, they generally lose their leaves during the winter; many tropical plants lose their leaves during the dry season.

The growth rate of plants is extremely variable. Some mosses grow less than 0.001 mm/h, while most trees grow 0.025-0.250 mm/h. Some climbing species, such as kudzu, which do not need to produce thick supportive tissue, may grow up to 12.5 mm/h.





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