Bittermelon Okinawan Style



According to my health-conscious Philippina friend, bittermelon is very nutrition, especially for women as it's iron-rich. Well, what female doesn't need bittermelon ... but a word of caution for the unsuspecting, the vegie ... is ... very ... bitter. I actually like it, but I'm not going to eat it like I would a cucumber, although it goes very nicely raw mixed equally with cucumber. In that kind of salad, I grate the bittermelon and cut the cucumber in thin rings. With some cherry tomatoes or a little lemon juice and salt, it's quite the nice salad.

 

This recipe I bumped into online and just wanted to try it. I prefer not to cook my vegies if I can help it, but hey, an experiment today ["today" being a month ago].

 

Bittermelon with Egg and Onions

 

Bittermelon with egg and onions, also called goya chanpuru in Japanese, and it is an Okinawan delicacy. I was telling my Philippina friend about it because she introduced me to this exotic healthy "treat" and she said, "Oh yeah, we have that too. We serve it for breakfast." And so I made mine for breakfast.

 

1 bittermelon sliced into half-moons, 1 small onion sliced the same,
3 small eggs, 2 cloves of garlic, and sea salt

lightly sautee the bittermelon and onion together on low heat

when vegies lightly sauteed, I added in the beaten eggs and a few teeny-tiny cherry tomatoes

 I can't believe I ate the whole thing in one meal. I was planning to have a little as a side-dish for later, a typical Asian idea, but it seemed the perfect size. Ah well!

 

Another version: with zucchini peelings

 

[My days of eating eggs came to an end here when I made the second goya chanpuyu. Back in Korea, after a whole summer with my family, I was thinking of omelets with "free range eggs" like I had eaten at home, so bought a carton of eggs (10 usually in a carton in Korea) and came running home to try this new recipe. But the free-range eggs I bought were close to disgusting. The egg whites were incredibly weird, almost runny like water. I threw two out that were particularly runny and used three. Subconsciously, I didn't feel good about the change in the eggs and particularly that I was willing to eat such things. It gave me some serious "food for thought". So I threw the remaining icky things out. There are ways to get proper nutrition without eating runny-white, or any kind of, egg. I was absolutely strict vegan for several months when I was first so sick, and that diet really helped me. In hindsight, it's kind of stupid of me to fall into former eating patterns that I had before when I clearly know that eggs and fish had a very evil effect on me. That effect is written in Candida's Illustrious Beginnings, a time I would like to completely blot out of my memory.]