Ginataang ampalaya

Bitter gourd salted to take the edge off, then finished in coconut milk with shrimp.

Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, shellfish.

Ingredients

• 600 g bitter gourd, halved and sliced
• 1 tablespoon salt, for drawing the bitterness
• 300 g shrimp, peeled
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 40 g fresh ginger, in matchsticks
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 tomatoes, in wedges
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 0.5 teaspoon black pepper

Method

1. SCRAPE THE WHITE PITH OUT AND SALT THE SLICES. Halve the gourd, take out the seeds and the spongy white layer with a spoon, slice, then toss with the tablespoon of salt and leave it 20 minutes in a sieve. Squeeze and rinse. The pith holds most of the bitterness and the salt pulls out the rest; skipped, the whole pan is inedible to most people.
2. Do not blanch it instead. Boiling water takes the bitterness and the texture together and leaves grey slices.
3. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil, 3 minutes.
4. Tomatoes in, pressed with the spoon, 3 minutes, until they have slumped and gone jammy.
5. Gourd in, turned over in the pan for 2 minutes.
6. Coconut milk and fish sauce in. Simmer gently, uncovered, 10 minutes. The gourd should keep a slight crunch -- it is meant to be a vegetable with bite, not a soft one.
7. Shrimp in for the last 3 minutes only, until just pink. Any longer and they tighten to rubber.
8. Pepper, and taste. If it is still sharper than you want, a spoonful more coconut milk does more than sugar would.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes