Addictive and Creamy Vegetable Recipe with Pork: Mixing Squash and Bitter Gourd with Coconut Milk

Never in my wildest dreams will bitter gourd be one of my most favorite vegetables. Seriously, who would want to eat bitter vegetables that taste like socks? Sorry, I really compared that vegetable to a sock, that's just the immature me back then, lol. Bitter gourd is actually a good vegetable, I know that now. You just have to find a suitable way to cook it. As for me, I find sautéing it with an egg or cooking it with squash and coconut milk to be really good ways to cook it. It is still bitter, but if you focus on the flavor, you'll surely ignore that and maybe enjoy it too, just like I always do whenever we cook those dishes.

For those who haven't seen a bitter gourd, this is what it looks like. It's green, and noticed the kind of body it has. And when you cut it, you'll see a seed inside with that white like cotton inside of it, we'll have to remove that when cooking. I'm not sure if other people remove that, but we do here in the Philippines. We also have ways to lessen its bitterness, just soak it in the water with salt and wait for 5 minutes. Some use MSG instead of salt, I'm not sure why.

So bitter gourd is one of the main ingredients in this dish, next is the squash. Look how beautiful that squash is! Just perfect for this dish. Let me share the whole list of ingredients below. It's easy to make, and I'm sure anyone can easily make this.

First things first, we have to peel everything that needs some peeling, like the squash, garlic, and onions. As for bitter gourd, they don't require peeling, you can just use them as is proceed cutting thwm.

And it's cutting time! You can cut your ingredients to whatever size you want. As for this dish, I cut them into bite-sized pieces. I also cut the onions and garlic, not mince.

I mentioned this before, but I like to soak any vegetables used in every dish we make in water with a pinch of salt. It's just my way of making it cleaner and also to kill those tiny creatures that may be hiding its skin, especially that Bitter Gourd. While waiting, I prepared the coconut milk and put it into this plastic cup. It's 200 ml, or you can use more to make it creamier. The creamier, the yummier - but of course, even that has a consequence, so put only the right amount.

Let's start cooking. Heat the pan, add a tablespoon of cooking oil, and sauté the garlic and onions, don't burn them, though then follow it with the meat. Add the seasonings, salt, ground pepper, and a tiny bit of MSG or Pork Cubes, you can remove that and use other seasonings instead if you don't like MSG.

After a minute of sautéing, add 3 tablespoons of coconut milk and two cups of water. We'll cook the meat for 10 minutes to make it tender and so that it will be easier to chew. And because I cut the meat into smaller pieces, I only cook the meat for 10 minutes on high heat.

After that, I proceeded with adding the vegetables, squash and bitter gourd - together and then the long chili. It'll be awesome if we have shrimp. Too bad shrimp is like gold in our town with how expensive it is, lol. But with shrimp, it'll make the dish more tastier and flavorful. If you have this in your fridge, then why not try to add it? Put it last because I heard shrimp only take a minute to be cooked. Is it true? What would happen if we overcooked it?

Anyway, let's boil this for another 8 minutes, or just until the veggies soften. Cooking squash doesn't take that much time, and so does the bitter gourd. Then try tasting it and seasoning it with salt again if you need to. And there we have it. Easy and simple dish for lunch.

Creamy, tasty, and yummy, this this is truly the perfect dish to pair with rice. You can still taste bitterness in it, but thanks to the natural sweetness squash has, it was overpowered by it. Same with the creaminess of the coconut milk. And with this vegetable combination, everything becomes more balanced, especially when it comes to its taste. It's a must-try. I recommend it ＼(^o)／.