The monsoon season ushers in a bonanza of various kinds of gourds, much loved vegetables in Goan homes. Taking pride of place other jade-coloured cool looking ridge gourds. They come in various shapes and size and make for delectable preparations. The going price for ridge gourd is Rs20 per medium size piece to Rs100 for four or five pieces. The small stout variety are considered to be a sweeter gauti variety!
By Tara Narayan
THE markets in Goa are flooded with lake green ridge gourds or “gosai” and I can’t take my eyes of them these days. Calla them gosai in Konkani/Marathi, turai in Hindi, jhinge in Bengali, beerakaya in Telugu…peerkangai in Tamil, in the oriental countries it’s Chinese okra! There are actually two versions of ridge gourd but the ridged version are more popular than then smooth waxy whitish version…this veggie is so rich in insoluble fibre that if you dry them out in the shade they turn to perfectly eco-friendly loofah to scrub your dirty feet if you walk barefoot! Remember the loofah sponges you may have scrubbed your feet with? They are lovely. Every thought that they are actually the dried out vegetable of the ridge gourd?
Anyway this is to say these I’m mesmerized by the piles of ridged gourd with the local vendors everywhere on the pavement markets or enclosed markets in Goa. Come the monsoon and come the gourds family of veggies. Some people have a very ambivalent attitude towards the gourds of life but many don’t. A more fibre-rich family of veggies would be hard to find. These days look at the ridge gourds, you want to eat them…look at the lovely jade green ridged gourd thin and long, fat and stout (these are said to be more “gauti” or local), some come in monster sizes too. Some of monster ridged gourd have ridges with a cutting edge so be careful while handling them! In the tender long, thin ridge gourd the ridges are more or less tame. You won’t cut yourself on them.
Actually, a lot of folk love them, the connoisseurs, the PYTs of pretty young things may say…eeeks or yuks, what kind of a vegetable is it, are you sure it is a vegetable?! But then…(sigh)…the PYTs of today prefer to stuff themselves on buttery fat pastas and grow obese (obesity you must know is the starting place of a lot of stupid unwarranted diseases and it’s all to do with the industrial junk foods we eat, specially created in factories and laboratories for us to grow fat and die prematurely. Also to make the healthcare industry run on oiled wheels!)
But to stay with the humble ridge gourds the only thing about this much-loved monsoon vegetable is that it may be bitter sometimes and vendors won’t let you taste before buying – you have to trust them when they say their ridge gourds are sweet, not bitter. But don’t let the odd bitter ridge gourd put you off. Give this veg are a chance, discover it, although in Goa you don’t need to say this. Most Goans do love the ridge gourd and they can be expensive with one ridge gourd being quoted at Rs20 and sometimes it’s Rs100 for four or five of them. Depends on size of course.
There are very many of cooking ridge gourd but the idea is to retain the delectable flavour if you can. Up and down the Konkan coast the usual way to do it is to just lightly scrape the gourd, cut and steam cook it before doing a mild tempering in jeera-hing (cumin-asafoetida), spicing mildly and with a dash of turmeric powder or mostly only salting mildly and tossing in freshly grated coconut as the final touch for that wee sweet coconut flavour which brings out the taste of the ridge gourd too. The simpler, the better the flavour, I always say.
RIDGE gourd is a light watery veggie with lots of insoluble fibre. The others in the gourd family are the snake gourd, bottle gourd, ash gourd, ivy gourd, wax gourd, spiny gourd and anymore you can think up. There’s the bitter gourd which I love so much and it is widely prescribed to diabetic patients although you don’t have to suffer from anything to love a bitter gourd sabzi or veggie as a side dish to go with wheat or millet roti/chapatti.
I think I’m more in love with bitter gourd and think the Guju way is the best way to cook it to go with ghee-laced phulka or “rotli.” In the old days at home my mother would make “karela nu shaak-rotli” combo very often. She would combine the karela or bitter gourd with potato wedges and it would be a dry preparation a bit sweetened with grated jaggery mixed in last and turned over…garnish with lots of fresh chopped green coriander. Add in caju bits if you want a crunch. Nice, very nice. Eat with any wheat flour roti or better still jowari or rice roti/chapatti (chapatti being lighter, thinner version and oftentimes made by steaming the flour before rolling it out for final cooking and puffing on stove).
The Guju bitter gourd dry sabzi is delectably and aromatically spicy bittersweet. I’m not sure if I can ever get the right combo of flavours as my mother’s preparation though. There are ways and ways of cooking bitter gourd though and most scrape lightly, slice and give them a rubbing in salt before rinsing off to cut the bitters…it depends on whether you like it less bitter or more bitter, I can take bitter-sweet most divinely!
Bitter gourds are also available plentifully currently during the monsoon months. In ridge gourds the bitters are rare but very unpalatable, so be careful when you buy them, taste if you are allowed before buying. The tender long ridge gourd may be astringent but the mature ones have a perfect watery sweetish flavour, just wash, scrape lightly and cook up as you wish. Down south India I remember they do a ridge gourd skin chutney which is much relished, must find the recipe.
Otherwise there is little to say about the ridge gourd. Some think it is the most non-descript gourd of them all! The gourds are a branch of the Cucurbitaceae family and there are about 965 species in around 95 genera…so think about that and be impressed! Not so non-descript after all. Botanically – luffa acutangula and yes, once dried up the ridge gourd make for a perfect foot scrubber or loofah (thanks to all the natural fibre with abundant cellulose). In Tamil culture and generally down south India they say the ridge gourd is for the eyes, it’s vitamin A rich and can improve the eyesight of even seniors…so eat them to reduce macular degeneration and another thing – some country home consumers dry the ridge gourd and let them steep in oil, it’s applied to hair which never greys. That’s the ridge gourd protection against greying hair. Constipated? Eat some ridge gourd. Ideal for losing weight too, eat more ridge gourd preparations.
SOME make ridge gourd raita. Some combo it with moong dal to arrive at a tasty preparation to go with rice or millet. This is to say there’re lots of ridge gourds in the market currently (along with a few other gourds), do discover them if you haven’t already!
