TAIWAN WHITE JADE BALSAM GOURD

Bitter melon, Chinese sausage, and egg. Quick and easy. Stirfried up with scant oil. Plus toast and tea, it was the dinner of champions.

I find that as I've matured, I prefer simpler things.


台灣白玉苦瓜
Toiwaan baak yuk fu-gwaa

The Taiwan white jade bitter melon is only a little more expensive than the regular ones, but just as tasty. I've only recently started seeing them on Stockton Street, likely they were not available in previous years. On the mainland, whenever they are sold outside of the sub-tropics, they are packed in that rubbery webbing that was developed to protect fruits, because they do bruise a little easy, which is far more noticeable on so pale a vegetable. The best ones have scarcely a hint of green.

As you would with regular balsam gourds, cut them and scoop out pith and seeds, then slice however you wish and put them in salt water to leech out the bitterness, or blanch them briefly in boiling water.

[Many Cantonese restaurants will cook them with black bean sauce, but while that is traditional, it is unnecessary. If you do need that flavour at your meal, do it to chicken. Or turkey. Turkey with black bean sauce is delicious, and that is one of the few good-tasting things you can do to that beastly bird.]


Bitter melons are a vegetable of which I am particularly fond.
It's not only a textural thing, I love their taste.
They are best barely cooked.
And still bitter.



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