bitter gourd

Bitter Gourd with Short Ribs

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Bitter Gourd with Short Ribs

I think you would know by now that I love bitter gourd. You can say the love is bittersweet. From time to time I would try and experiment with different recipes just so that I can have my favourite bitter gourd for my meals.

So in this rendition of bitter gourd in black bean sauce, I have decided to try out Beef Short Ribs. These cuts are the nicely marbled slices that you would usually have at Korean BBQ restaurants. When stir fried, these beef slices are tender and flavorful umami.

Best part is, they sold it at an NTUC nearby. As they say, it cant get any better than that.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 whole Bitter Gourd (I usually select the largest one from the wet market. But you can choose a smaller one if you like, medium size is best.)
150 grams Beef Short Ribs (NTUC or Cold Storage sells these, stir fry for 2 persons, this is usually enough.)
4 tbsp Olive Oil (the bigger the bigger gourd, the more oil you need)
2 inches Young Ginger (you can use any ginger, but this is the type that I usually like to work with for a light marination of the beef. It tenderises it nicely.)
1 tsp Sesame Seed Oil
1 tbsp Salted Black Bean Sauce (there are many brands around, I am currently using Tiger Brand and it works out quite well for me.)
5 cloves Garlic (just rough chop The garlic and they are ready, my son loves the chunky bits of garlic.)
1 tsp Kikkoman Soya Sauce (by far the Kikkoman brand of soya sauce is the most flavourful.)
Drizzle of Thai Fish Sauce (I like Thai Fish Sauce for its light flavour and it works well with vegetables especially when you stir fry.)

Method

1. Start off by marinating the beef slices in grated ginger and its juice. Add soya sauce and sesame seed to flavour the beef slices. Leave it in a bowl for about 10 minutes while you prepare the bigger gourd slices.

2. After slicing the bitter gourd thinly so that it would cook faster, soak it in cold water for a while. Prepare the garlic by rough chopping and after that you can fire up the wok.

3. Add the oil, turn it up medium heat. Stir fry the garlic for a while until it slightly browns and then add in the black bean sauce. Fry till you can smell the fragrance.

4. Add the marinated beef slices, juice and all, and continue frying until the meat starts to change colour a little. Then add the washed bitter gourd slices to stir fry.

5. Turn the heat to high, add a little water and then cover the lid to allow it to steam cook for about 5 minutes.

6. Make sure that the bitter gourd slices all turn soft and darker green before serving. It shouldn’t be light green after you are done with it. That’s it!

Bon Appetit!

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Bitter Gourd sliced thinly

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Marinated beef short ribs in grated ginger

Bitter Gourd Soup

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Bitter Gourd Soup

I have done another version of this soup previously and it is called Bitter Gourd and Pork Ribs Soup. In that version, I added a slice of dried octopus to which my wife complained that she did not like it that much. I thought initially that the flavours of the dried octopus would have sweetened the soup. I guess some people really like their soups basic.

Which is not a bad thing for the cook. It is already quite tedious to cook on demand as a routine, so cooking basic and simple is definitely something that I like. And it tastes better in an interesting way as well as the soups are not complex and is easily understood. Sometimes whenever I am eating out, I am guessing what actually went into the making of the soup. Great tasting soups should be singular in nature and if possible with a simple meat base to make the soup stronger in flavour.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 whole Bitter Gourd (I usually like the larger size ones as my family loves bitter gourd)
250 grams Pork Ribs (my pork ribs are usually frozen when I cook them. There is no need to thaw the meat before cooking.)
1 tsp Sea Salt (for 1.8 litres of water)

Method

1. Boil a kettle of water (about 1.8 litres). Wash and cut the bitter gourd into 1cm slices.

2. Place the pork ribs into the soup pot. Place the bitter gourd slices into the pot as the picture above. Add salt. Add the boiling water. Boil at high heat for 15 minutes.

3. Then place the pot into the thermal cooker for cooking either overnight so that you can make a bee hoon bitter gourd soup for breakfast or just as a soup accompaniment for dinner. Allow the thermal cooker to do its work for at least 8 to 10 hours. That’s it. Easy.

Bon Appetit!

Hakka Yong Tau Foo

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Hakka Yong Tau Foo

This is a recipe from my paternal grandparents, a humble yet delicious Hakka Yong Tau Foo deep fried in soya bean oil and then cooked in a rich broth of soya beans and kiam chye. I have never bothered to learn the recipe and thankfully my mum being the dutiful daughter-in-law took on the mantle of preparing the laborious dish for future Lunar New Year dinners.

Mum improved on the recipe and made it her own and it tasted even better than how grandpa did. I resolved to one day make it myself and to make it as easy as possible. That day is today and for the benefit of all, here’s my take on the family recipe.

Of course my rendition means I do it the way I like and so I basically only used bitter gourd and left out the tau kwa and tau pok altogether. Wanna know how? Read on.

Recipe

Ingredients

Fish Paste (you can get this from the wet market at the stall that sells yong tau foo pieces and fish balls. Ironic, I know. For this recipe, I got $3 worth of fish paste.)
Minced Pork (lean pork but tell the butcher to run it into a minced. $3 worth again of lean minced pork.)
1/4 cup of Dried Shrimps (the more you add, the tastier it will be, so you may wanna add more.)
4 pieces of Dried Oysters (this is entirely optional if you don’t like the taste but it was part of my grandparents original recipe. My wife don’t really like, so I left them out.)
1 Bitter Gourd (cut into 1cm thickness. It might be better to cut diagonally so that the fish/meat paste doesn’t fall out during cooking)
2 pieces of Tau Kwa (optional. Cut into diagonals.)
2 pieces of Tau Pok (optional. Cut into diagonals.)
1/2 packet of Dried Soya Beans (you can buy these at NTUC and you would need to soak them overnight at least.)
2 bulbs of Kiam Chye (these are salted vegetables for the unacquainted.)
2 pieces of Preserved Salted Plums (easily purchased from the supermarket.)
1 packet of Fish Balls
Light Soya Sauce
White Pepper
Sesame Seed Oil
Corn Flour
Soya Bean Oil

Method

1. Soak the soya beans and dried shrimps overnight in a pot of water. I soaked them together because I was lazy.

2. The next day, I picked the shrimps out of the pot and threw them into bowl along with the fish paste and minced pork. Most people I know would chop the shrimps but I dropped them whole. Tastier that way. In it I mixed a little light soya sauce, a small drizzle of sesame seed oil and give it a good mix. Use your hands, the flavour is stronger. I’m kidding.

3. Boil the soya beans at high heat with the kiam chye and drop the two salted plums into the broth. You want to extract all the goodness out of these ingredients because you are gonna discard them after you have wasted them in the pot.

4. Cut the bitter gourd into 1cm thick slices. I did them wrongly as in cut them straight. But you should cut them in a slight diagonal. This will help you keep the fillings from falling out.

5. Fill the fish/minced/shrimps paste into the bitter gourd slices and coat it with a light corn flour liquid so that it would hold the fillings in the bitter gourd slices. You can make a simple corn flour mixture by mixing a tablespoon of corn flour with some water.

6. Fill a small pot with lots of soya bean oil (olive oil would be a little costly). Heat it up with big fire. Then deep fry the bitter gourd pieces until the meat fillings turn brown. If you didn’t, then maybe it won’t taste so nice.

7. Once you have fried all your bitter gourd items you can drop them into your soup pot. Remember to remove at least half of the soya beans and all of the Kiam Chye. This is to make space for the bitter gourd pieces. Boil at high heat and once it is bubbling, you may serve. You may also add fish balls if you like.

Bon Appetit!

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Soak soya beans and dried shrimps together

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Fish paste, minced pork and dried shrimps

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Cut bitter gourd into 1cm slides

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Fill the bitter gourd pieces with the fish/meat/dried shrimps mixture

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After deep frying the bitter gourd pieces, cook them in the soya bean and kiam chye broth

Bitter Gourd in Salted Egg

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Bitter Gourd in Salted Egg

This is a restaurant grade recipe. Haha. Okay, I wish it was. I love eating almost everything in a salted egg sauce and nothing beats eating my favourite Bitter Gourd in my favourite salted egg sauce.

It’s a quite simple dish to make really, just that to do it well, you need to know what you are doing. So if you are game for something different, you can try this. It will rock your dinners and also impress a few friends.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 whole Bitter Gourd
3 Salted Egg Yolks
Half a slab of Unsalted Butter
1 tbsp of Castor Sugar
Chicken Stock (not from stock cubes)

Method

1. Clean and gut the bitter gourd of the seeds. Cut into half. Then steam at high heat for about 5 minutes. Then slice then diagonally into bite size pieces.

2. In a wok, add half a slab of Butter, if you need directions, then half a slab of butter would be 125 grams.

3. Add the egg yolks. These eggs are cooked and hard boiled. Using the back of your frying ladle, mesh the egg yolks into the butter. Make sure the egg yolks are nicely mixed into the butter.  Ensure that it is at low heat.

4. Add chicken stock made from boiling chicken bones. Just about 3 tbsp would be sufficient. Add Sugar to taste, maybe about 1 tbsp.

5. Once that is done, ladle the sauce over the butter gourd and serve.

Bon Appetit!

Stir Fry Beef and Bitter Gourd

Stir Fry Beef and Bitter Gourd

This has got to be my my mum’s favourite dish amongst all the dishes that she cooks. I know this simply because she cooks it every other week and it is always with my favourite preserved black beans. The sauce is wah shiok!

I think this was also the dish that turned me to love bitter gourd as a child. I never use to like vegetables all that much but overcoming bitter gourd was a milestone in my gastronomic journey. Everything else was palatable compared to bitter gourd.

She likes to stir fry it with beef slices marinated in ginger juice. She would pound the ginger into a pulp and extract the juice. I found a better way to do this and that is to grate the ginger instead. Beef was an essential source of iron and it was great for keeping anemic kids healthy. The tell tale sign would be to look at the palm of our hands and it would be decided that we would have stir fry Beef and Bitter Gourd for that day. Just kidding.

Recipe

Ingredients

200 grams of Beef Flank (NTUC has one of the best beef flank and it is perfect for Stir Fry)
1 tube of Bitter Gourd
3 inches of Ginger
3 cloves of Garlic
1 tbsp Salted Preserved Black Beans
1 tbsp Light Soy Sauce
1 tsp White Pepper powder
2 tbsp Olive Oil

Method

1. First boil a kettle of water. This is for cooking the bitter gourd. Then sliced the beef fillet thinly. Once done put the beef slices into a ziplock bag. Add soy sauce and pepper into the bag. Then grate the ginger into the bag as well. This forms the Marinate for the beef slices to make it tender. Marinate for about 5-8 minutes.

2. Slice the bitter gourd thinly and then blanch in a pot of boiling hot water (pour the kettle in). As the bitter gourd is sliced thinly, it should also cook quite fast while still retaining some crunchiness.

3. Pour the oil into the frying pan and heat it up. Once heated fry the garlic pieces until fragrant. Then add the marinated beef slices and stir fry until semi cooked. Then add the blanched bitter gourd slices and stir fry until the juices come out.

4. Add the black beans and continue to fry until flavours are thoroughly mixed. Once ready, serve with steam rice.

Bon Appetit!

Bitter Gourd and Pork Ribs Soup

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Bitter Gourd and Pork Ribs Soup

It seems like the unlikeliest of collaborations, more unlikely than the Lotus and Radish Soup. The bitter gourd and pork ribs is what most of us would already know, but to have an octopus swimming around in the soup, I bet the final taste would be out of this world.

As it is, the mixture of the bitterness that is in the bitter gourd juxtaposed with that of the fishy aftertaste of octopus, is probably gonna taste really yummy. I can’t wait to taste this soup tonight. Something about pork ribs that makes the soup taste so much better than chicken bones. It’s such a simple recipe anyone can do it.

Recipe

Ingredients

200 grams of Pork Ribs
1 whole Bitter Gourd
1 piece dried Octopus

Method

1. Boil water, then pour into pot with ribs and octopus and let them get acquainted. After boiling for about 10 minutes, add the sliced bitter gourd and some sea salt. Continue to boil for another 5 minutes at high heat.

2. When done, take and place in thermal cooker and eat it when you get home. Perfect.

Bon Appetit!

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Sliced Bitter Gourd