My bitter melons are coming along. I’m sharing some with friends and have been looking for ideas on cooking some. I’m planning to make a Thai basil shrimp stir fry for dinner so I wanted to find a Thai bitter melon dish to make to go with it. I found this recipe described as Authentic Thai Recipe for Bitter Gourd Soup (Tom Juet Ma Ra) and decided to try it. I’ve made a stuffed bitter melon with black bean sauce that was good and I wanted to try this one.

I went to my garden and picked some bitter melon and then sliced it into about 1.5 inch pieces and scraped out the seeds and pulp and salted it for about 20 minutes.

While it was sitting in salt, I combined ground pork with garlic, grated carrots, softened rice noodles, shoyu, oyster sauce and some sugar. After about 20 minutes, I rinsed the bitter melon slices and stuffed it with the pork mixture. Once the slices are stuffed, I placed it in a pot with some broth to just cover the slices along with sliced carrots and sliced shiitake mushrooms and simmered it for about 1.5 hours.

What a simple garden to table dish. Living Hilo Style.