Yard Long Beans or Barbati

Yard Long Beans

I wanted this week's culinary adventure to yield something I could bear to eat after the bitter melon disappointment.  So I opted for something a lot less alien looking - in fact, just a very long version of the french beans I cook with quite often anyway.  My research showed that these are an Asian favourite (China, Thailand, India, Malaysia, etc.) and several of the recipes I found teamed them up with sweet combinations such as coconut or jaggery (essentially block sugar).

Heart-shaped Bean Slices

I decided to go for something with coconut and followed Smitha's Spicy Foods recipe also known as Barbati Kobari Koora.  Urid (or urad) Dal are black lentils that have been peeled and split.  I used nowhere near as much as a tablespoon of red chilli powder - I sprinkled it carefully!  I used coconut powder and I added the turmeric at the same time as the ginger garlic paste.

Barbati Kobari Koora

The smell of the kitchen when I stirred in the coconut powder was delicious, as was the finished dish.  I'd definitely recommend this recipe to anyone fancying a new twist on beans.

Bitter Melon or Karela

Slice through the bitter melon

Have you ever passed an exotic grocery shop and seen all sorts of weird and wonderful fruit and veg that you have no idea what you'd do with?  It can't just be me!  We're lucky to have one of these shops just round the corner so I decided to investigate some of the ingredients a bit further.  They do such a variety in there and if they don't have it, no matter where its origin, they'll try and get it for you if you ask.

Close up of the bitter melon skin



You may have noticed a green vegetable that looks like really warty-skinned cucumbers.  They look very alien to me. I looked them up on Wikipedia and found out they're called Bitter Melon (amongst other things) and do indeed come from the cucumber family. They pop up in all sorts of cultures' cookery including Indian, Chinese and South Asian. It's used for all sorts of medicinal purposes including diabetes and malaria.

As its name suggests, it's very bitter.  The lighter it is (it goes from green to yellow when ripe), the more bitter the flesh and the sweeter the pulp around the seeds inside.  Having tried it quite green today, I wouldn't dream of tasting it when it's yellow.

I found an Indian recipe for a vegetable dish courtesy of Vah Reh Vah . There's a video with the recipe and his face when he tastes the juice (albeit the bitterest ... but most medicinal part) says it all. 

However, it was an interesting experiment and finally satisfied my curiosity about this weird looking vegetable.

A selection of the ingredients

The bitter melon cooking

The finished dish

I'm wondering whether I didn't pick the vegetables very well as I didn't really know what I was looking for in terms of the right level of ripeness.  I think I need to track somebody down who knows how to do it properly before I swear never to buy it again ...