Lemongrass tea and
cucumber cures

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

From the email recently came an article extolling the virtues of the cucumber, how this heretofore ordinary veggie is supposedly loaded with vitamins and minerals, how it can promote health and wellness and how it can be used to solve a hundred and one household problems.

I really do not know how valid these claims are as anybody can just upload anything on the Net and its all up to us to see how to use them or not. But the cucumber claims are tantalizing – from being a perk-me-up to pesticide to cleaning agent to cellulite remover, shoe polish, breath freshener, and others.

This week, Facebook, or at least my wall, has been abuzz with the healing properties of lemon grass, especially its ability to supposedly dissolve cancerous growth. Again, one has no way of validating these claims. But lemongrass, our tanglad, supposedly has citral, which “prompts cancer cells to commit suicide.”

It can be steeped in hot water and taken as a drink, which is exactly how the so-called lemongrass is done and served.

While we cannot immediately validate the superfood properties of the pipino and tanglad, we all know they are delicious, and there are dishes we simply cannot have without them. Our chicken tinola, for instance, has to have tanglad or it is not chicken tinola at all. The pipino, on the other hand, is one of the most popular simple salads we have: sliced and simply drizzled with vinegar, it makes for a great palate awakener.

Lemongrass has been taking the gourmet route abroad, the tea a special delicate addition to the meals. While it is usually served simply boiled in water, some of the lemongrass recipes I’ve tried play with other ingredients to jack it up. A favorite is lemongrass that has whispers of fresh ginger, the lemony aroma and taste of the tanglad playing beautifully with that of the ginger. Care of course has to be taken that their tastes are properly synced – too much could mean tea that is akin to the chicken tinola soup.

Another variant of the lemongrass tea is one which has a few droplets of lemon or good old kalamansi. Again, with these, there must be prudence that none of the tastes and aroma of the lemongrass or the fruits overpower the tea. Just hints of their flavors should make a sexy cup.

The cucumber, on the other hand, can go beyond the vinegar-dressing. A local restaurant serves a nice salad of white cucumber meat strings dressed in Japanese mayo, and uni in cucumber cups – two dishes that should inspire more possibilities for this cheap and readily-available vegetable. With the popularity of healthy juices these days, cucumbers also make for nice green juice – just pass it through the juicer and put plenty of ice in the glass. Of course, we have traditionally eaten it also as pickles, but I am sure we have not yet plumbed the depths of our culinary creativity in this.

Of course, tanglad and the pipino are just two of the recent items people have zeroed in on our continuing search for health and wellness on our plates.

There have been similar attentions given to the pomegranate, or the granada, the sayote, the mangosteen. They are supposedly packed with plenty of health and wellness properties. The problem, it now appears, is that we really have not pursued these things properly, perhaps for some agency to help us eliminate the fiction from the facts.*

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