A big Thank-you to Dr. Anna Arzu for providing us with white turmeric! A while back, Dr. Arzu had written an article in The Toledo Howler (a Belize Tourism newspaper based in this district) on this particular aromatic root. After reading it, we had been anxious to procure a specimen to grow on our farm. Last week, we fortuitously bumped into the author of this article and she was happy to provide us with the rhizome. Her gardener, on that very day was cleaning up a bunch of these plants and she said that she had plenty to spare. We raced on down to her house in record time and managed to get our specimen.
The Latin name for this plant is Curcuma zedoaria; it is also known as white turmeric, zedoary root, arura and angostura. The last name made us very curious about whether this plant had any connection with Angostura Bitters and so we did some Internet research. Angostura bitters is so-called because it first originated from the town of Angostura in Venezuela and apparently does not contain any flavourings from Angostura trifoliata, a medicinal plant from South America. Our research did not yield any possible connections between this plant and the famous bitters and there is no way of knowing whether this root is an actual ingredient as this is a very closely guarded secret.
We tasted some of the raw root which had camphor-like flavouring with a mild and pleasant bitterness. We have been making tea infusions and I even flavoured a meal with it today. We love this stuff! We have already got it in the ground.
