Wednesday, May 2, 2007

carrots and bitter melon

refrigerate them. if not, after 3 days, u have mouldy carrot. Thought id be like potatoes (both roots) and keep for a good while. That was very wrong.

Tonight, bitter melon and lamb? *shrugs* I have no black beans, no stock and possibly no garlic, i'm way outta my comfort zone...

Well that was very educational, first off it seems that it would be good to give bitter melon a bit of a boil before you use it in cooking. Get it on its way kinda thing. If its raw it has this kinda sharp raw taste, which very "blergh" (more blergh then regular bitter melon).

If you intend to chuck it into a stew then you probably dont need to blanch it all (maybe a little bit). Problem is if you stew it in too long it seems to loses all the bitterness, which is also undesirable. I think another factor is I cut the slices of bitter melon way too thin.

So anyways, I stewed it with a mix of beer, ketchup manis, mirin and a spoonful of soy and hoisin sauce. Probably was a little sweet, but went well with the (not bitter) bitter melon and pork belly slices.

If i had balls, id try and match it with shrimp paste. =P more here

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