from the lanai

From the lanai, I picked a little of the cilantro, a little green onion and two of the goya (bitter melon).

Can you believe that on the 3rd floor we have worms?

How in the heck can they come up that high?

Anyway, the worm(s) were in the smaller of the two goya, and on the bell pepper and on the chili pepper plant, I'll tell you about the bell pepper and chili pepper plant another day.

So, about a week ago, I spotted one worm(on the smaller of the two goya), it hadn't made a hole but was just gnawing at it, brave dude to gnaw at the goya like that.

I took it off, then left the goya to get bigger.

Yesterday, I noticed that the bigger of the two goya was a light tinge of yellow, meaning it was getting overripe.

So, I picked the two and noticed this hole...

...with this long bugger in it.

Eep! and the thing about it was I thought it was dead but it was still alive.

In the morning, I thought it would've died in the garbage bucket but no, it had climbed out and was trapped in my tea strainer on the counter...sigh.

So now, he will definitely be going out with the garbage...sorry, dude.

Getting back to the goya, green onion and cilantro.

Whenever I buy goya, my cooking repertoire consists of one thing, goya champuru.

This time around, I decided to try making stuffed bitter melon and used Nate's recipe as inspiration. UPDATE: the author passed away and the blog is no longer public.

After washing the goya, I sliced it into 1 inch (or so) slices. With a butter knife, I scraped out the "cotton" as best as I could.

Then, I filled each piece with this filling:

97 grams of minced pork
chopped green onion
6 water chestnuts, minced
1/2 tablespoon shoyu
1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon black bean sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 egg

Mix well.

Since my goya were quite small, I had extra filling, Nate said in his post that he steamed the rest of his filling in foil cups, so that is what I did also.

I put them in foil cups that I have for bento.

I don't have a steamer big enough to accommodate all of these pieces, so I put them into my non-stick frying pan.

I put the heat on low, added a little water to the pan after it heated up and covered the pan for 30 minutes.

After steaming it for 30 minutes, I turned off the heat and let it sit in the pan, covered for another 10 minutes.

Then served it with rice and topped it with the fresh cilantro.

NOTES: As an after thought, if ever I need to steam in my frying pan again, I will put whatever needs to be steamed on foil, so that the water won't come in direct contact with it.

This was delicious and I'm glad I tried a different way to prepare goya.

Thanks Nate for the cilantro seeds and delicious recipe.