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 ...