Galangal

The chicken soup I made using this galangal (Apinia galanga) rhizome, Tom Kha Gai, following (mostly) the recipe in Diane Morgan's Roots, was really quite fabulous.  A fish curry with similar spicing was also tasty.

Galangal is in the Zingiberaceae, the ginger family, and, as the edible part is a rhizome, it resembles ginger visually (well, about as much as an iris looks like ginger).  The smell and the flavor are not ginger-like,  It does have warmth, but not heat, and has very definite citrus notes.  We will be buying it again.