Wines can take years to make and mature. Alcohol can take months to infuse. Pickles can take weeks to soften in brine…
…so 5 days for ginger confit should be nothing. It should be like getting to the end of one breath and instead of getting bored and moving on to your next flight of fancy, opening your lungs and inhaling again – it should be natural. And yet, here I am, trying to learn to be patient.
Ingredients
500g fresh ginger (yes, that’s half a kilo, which is just over a pound of ginger)
800g sugar (3 cups plus about 3 tbsp)
500mL water (about 2 cups)
There are all sorts of recipes with lime peel and chilies for ginger confit, which sound amazing, but for a first time I looked for a recipe that was basic. I had to actually look in French because candied ginger is not the same as ginger confit, and all my English results for ginger confit were candied ginger. So I looked up gingembre confit and found this.
First the chopping — a pound of ginger peeled with a spoon is not a task to be embarked upon lightly. Tearing off the gnarled skin from the knuckled fingers, and then chopping the uneven pieces into a mountain of matchsticks takes time. My roommate entered the kitchen at the beginning of the peeling stage and asked what all the garlic was for.
Thank goodness it’s not garlic, I thought. It’s one thing for my hands to burn (and they did), but it’s quite another to smell for two days. I don’t want to waft in the metro. An hour later when he came back into the kitchen I was still peeling ginger.
After the matchstick chopping (which goes relatively quickly with a good knife and some leftover ambition) I put the ginger pieces in a bowl of cold water and left them to soak for an hour.
…and for the first time in the ginger process I waited. This is harder than peeling and chopping sometimes. I don’t know what was coming out of the ginger, but the water turned immediately cloudy. An hour later when I removed the ginger pieces, there were thick streaks of gelatinous yellow sticking to the bottom of the bowl. I have no idea.
Then the ginger went into a saucepan with enough cold water to cover. I brought the water to a boil. boiled five minutes, and then drained the pan. Refilled the plan with the ginger and fresh cold water, brought to a boil, boiled five more minutes, drained. Repeated two more times. I could have done it four more times but it takes 15-20 minutes per boil session and I’m new at patience. Young, flighty me actually likes the piquancy of the ginger that gets mellowed with further boiling.
While the ginger is boiling for the last time I dissolved the sugar in the water in another saucepan. No need to waste time doing this once the ginger is drained and shivering. I am not a Zen master (yet), after all. After the final boiling and draining, I put the ginger into a clean heat-proof bowl and poured the sugar/water mixture on top. Then I covered the bowl with a plate and let it sit at room temperature for 12 hours.
…and I waited. and I breathed.
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