Making A Tasty Dish with a Bitter Melon

There's a saying, my friends, that when life serves you lemons, you can make lemonades. Well, this morning I did just that, turning around in the kitchen in a bid to eke taste from the caraille fruit, otherwise known as a bitter melon.

If you're not familiar with the bitter melon, or caraille as we know it in the Caribbean, it's a tropical vine that is widely grown in Asia and Africa and the Caribbean. The fruit is known for its many health benefits due to its rich vitamin and mineral content including fiber, vitamin C, folate and vitamin A. It is said to help reduce blood sugar, and fight cancer, among other benefits. The thing is though, the bitter melon is, as it's name suggests, bitter.

When I was a child, I hated the caraille. My mom would fry it and serve it crispy with rice, and I would eat only the rice but balk at the thought of tasting even one slice of caraille, ugh! The older I grew, the less willing I was to experiment with the taste until recently, I came across a packet of pre-sliced caraille in the supermarket and thought, why not? After all, I was thinking, there's lemons and lemonades, so maybe I could take the caraille and turn it into something delicious too, right?

So this morning I got to work. I washed and soaked the melon slices in pink salt water for a few minutes while prepping my vegetables: tomatoes, pimentos, celery, onions, etc. When it was finished, I was quite happy. It looked good at least.

Then I put together a quick dish of shredded meats together with vegetables separately. Figured what they hey.

Then it was time to cook them. So I got two separate frying pans, put a bit of olive oil in, put them on a slow heat, and when they were ready, I put the vegetables in first, sauteed for a few minutes, and then added the caraille, which had been pressed dry by the way to get a lot of the water out, and in the other pan, I put in the meat. Fried both dishes until they were crispy. Sprinkled a bit of cheese atop them when they were finished. And then served with slices of bread and a dash of pepper. Yummy!

And so, my friends, I made a tasty dish from bitter melons, reaffirming the point that there's no need to mope around and accept one's circumstances as they are, even if they seem unfavorable in a moment. As humans, we are resourceful enough, I believe, to turn almost every trial into a triumph!

Thank you for reading.

Resources:

• https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/bitter-melon#TOC_TITLE_HDR_6

• With the exception of the first image sourced from Pixabay, all other images are my own.