Vegging Out

Indian food offered me a hole new array of foods, from dals and spices to fruits and vegetables. My first impulse was to try and cook a few meals with familiar foods, with vegetables I knew. Later, as I peered into the coolers at the Indian grocery stores, I wanted to "know" those new vegetables! Some looked protective, with armour shell, like the ridge gourd and drumstick. Others looked threatening, as if they were suffering from a fatal skin disease, the bitter melon. Those are one ugly food. Maybe they are cultivated near toad ponds and have someone crossed the plant-animal barrier and contracted a severe case of warts? Not only are they UGLY, but bitter, bitter. One of the two types of beans, the long beans, were long and limp, very unlike the starchy stiff string beans on which I grew. I could see myself pasting bunches of those beans onto my head and creating a green corn-row wig of hair. They took longer to cook than 'normal' beans, something I learned after ruining the first batch. Tindora, little miniature cucumber-like green things, were unlike anything I had seen. Actually, they're kind of cute and cut open reminded me just a wee bit of a fruit like pomegranates. Chow chow (chayote) squash looked like a pear but sure didn't taste like one!

Without a cooking guru, I was pretty much on my own when I began investigating these new green things. I started with bitter melon. How could I resist anything that was bitter? My found recipes for the vegetable said nothing about removing the pulp, or just how nasty those seeds taste. I found out. And later I learned I could parboil it, or soak it in salt water, and draw off some of the bitterness.

Then I found some fresh drumstick. Interesting. Long, thin, hard. I cut it up into smaller pieces and cooked it. However, when I went to eat it, I found my mouth filled with stick. Nobody told me that its customary to open a section and scrape out the delicious meat onto one's teeth, and discard the outer shell. It reminds me a little of asparagus.

Unripe mangoes sure are tart!

Snake gourd is interesting, the outer shell that is eaten a little leathery texture, was one of the more acquired tastes I encountered, more for the texture than the taste. I'm still getting acquainted with that one.

Now, I'm not afraid to clothes my eyes, and stick my hand into the cooler and see what vegetable I grab. Once I can identify the sucker, it's easy to find recipes.

The good thing is that I have a whole new collection of interesting tastes to expand with in my cooking.

Next for me is mastering tamarind, and learning how to crack open a coconut without firing up the oven.