Sereh

Cymbopogon citratus. This is called, in English, lemon grass, which gives a very fair idea of it. According to Burkill, Europeans used at one time to grow it in greenhouses and make lemon-grass tea if they found the real thing too strong for them. In cooking, it is used either fresh, dried or powdered. You can grow fresh sereh at home; it makes an attractive house-plant, if you can get a root of it to start you off. Most Indian shops in England sell dried sereh, which you can use as if it were a bay-leaf, putting it into the pan and taking it out again before serving. It is a long, thin leaf—a blade of grass, in fact—so bundle it up a bit and tie a knot in it before putting it in. If you buy sereh powder, which is very good and perfectly adequate for the job of flavouring, use it very, very sparingly.