Luffa aka Ridge Gourd aka Chinese Okra

[TheTInCook]

Luffa is going on sale this weekend at my local chinese chain market. 3lbs for a dollar.

Anyone have any ideas of things or experience with what to do with it?

[Will]

Also called snake gourd (丝瓜 ／ sī guā). In Chinese cooking, usually prepared fairly simply, maybe braised or blanched and then stir-fried, but another common way to cook it is with salted duck egg (the regular kind, not the century egg kind). I posted a basic method for doing this with bitter gourd in another thread.

You can see a picture of how it should look here:

http://exilekiss.blogspot.com/2010/02/fresh-vibrant-pure-shanghai-cuisine-and.html

[TheTInCook]

Oh yeah, I think that was my thread too. I'm too much of a gweilo for salted eggs though.

[Will]

Oh yeah, I think that was my thread too. I'm too much of a gweilo for salted eggs though.

Why? It's just really salty -- other than that, it just tastes like egg. If you've got 3 weeks to spare, you can make your own.

Edited August 20, 2011 by Will (log)

[liuzhou]

My nearest restaurant here in China steams them in strips then serves with fried garlic. That's all.

I've also had them stir fried with frog.

Luffa with garlic.

Stir fried frog with luffa.

[Jenni]

Also called snake gourd (丝瓜 ／ sī guā).

Careful - certainly in India, snake gourd refers to a completely different vegetable!

In Hindi ridge gourd is called torai. In Bengali it is jhinge, in Tamil peerkangai and Kannada heerekayi. You will see variations on the spellings of these when they are written in English. Obviously other Indian languages have their own names, I am just giving you a selection. Try putting these words into google with recipe after them for some lovely regional recipes.

My favourite use for ridgegourd is in chutney. It's something I always come back to! In South India actually it is common to make a chutney out of the spines that are scraped off when the ridge gourd is used for other dishes - an excellent example of being resourceful about something that would otherwise be thrown away! However, I use the whole gourd because I think it tastes great.

I use about two cups of chopped ridge gourd. The gourd gets fried up with a spoonful of channa dal and some red chillies. Then it gets blended with 1/2 cup grated coconut and the strained paste of a small ball of tamarind that has been soaking in hot water. This mixture then receives an extra seasoning: mustard seeds, chillies, hing and curry leaves popped in hot oil and tipped in to the chutney.

It's a really excellent chutney to go with most Southie breakfast foods such as dosa, idli, upma, etc. , but it is also delicious with rice as a simple meal or as part of a more complex one. In our house the favourite accompaniment is ragi rotti - which is a rough flat bread made of ragi flour (a kind of millet) and highly seasoned with onions, coconut, chillies and coriander.

Other uses in our house are just simply like any other gourd in Indian cookery. They go well with potatoes and tomatoes in a North Indian style sabzi. And in Bengal they are much prized as an excellent summer vegetable as they are believed to be very cooling. One particularly good Bengali use for them is jhinge posto, which is ridge gourd with white poppy seeds. The dish is very similar to the more well known aloo posto. In addition it is (to my mind at least) an important vegetable for the famous Bengali "bitter stew" shukto. In the South they are used in various vegetable dishes much like other gourds.

Ridge gourd also make great pakora or bhajja, can be ground up with soaked rice for a quick dosa batter or even added in thin slices to the dosa batter itself for a particularly unusual dosa!

More often than not, people in India lightly peel the very ridges off. Some are more thorough in this peeling. But as I mentioned above, often this peel is not wasted!

Thanks for letting me waffle on for ages about one of my favourite vegetables!

Edited August 20, 2011 by Jenni (log)

[djyee100]

All those dishes sound great, Jenni.

I recently tried a stirfry of loofa squash with shrimp in one of Kasma Loha-unchit's classes. This website has an adapted recipe. In the original recipe, the shrimp are cut into small pieces, not chopped. The original recipe uses peanut oil.

http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/special/2001/asianveg/luffa.html#axzz1VasYAnHM

The stirfry was simple and very good. Some things to keep in mind:

- Buy skinny, young loofah squash at the market. They taste better. I bought squash about 1 1/4 inch in diameter. Remember to peel them!

- Before cooking, taste a small bit of the squash raw. It should be sweet, not bitter. If the squash is bitter, toss it--or accept that the dish will not come out as intended.

- Cook the squash very lightly to retain its freshness and sweetness. I watch for it to warm and turn translucent at the edges, and it's done--residual heat in the dish will do the rest. If you overcook this vegetable, it loses its sweetness and tastes very different.

have fun cooking!

[liuzhou]

On 8/20/2011 at 10:39 AM, Will said:

Also called snake gourd (丝瓜 ／ sī guā). In Chinese cooking, usually prepared fairly simply, maybe braised or blanched and then stir-fried, but another common way to cook it is with salted duck egg (the regular kind, not the century egg kind). I posted a basic method for doing this with bitter gourd in another thread.

You can see a picture of how it should look here:

http://exilekiss.blogspot.com/2010/02/fresh-vibrant-pure-shanghai-cuisine-and.html

 

I know this is a very old thread, but I want to correct something. Luffa - 丝瓜 (sī guā) and snake gourd - 蛇瓜 (shé guā) are two very different things. Snake gourd is Trichosanthes cucumerina, whereas luffa is Luffa aegyptiaca or Luffa acutangula.

Edited December 22, 2019 by liuzhou (log)