anna_wing

A friend brought me some green lotus pods, and showed me how to eat the seeds. I've had them dried of course, and cooked in various ways (stir-fried, in stew, in sweet soups, as lotus paste for mooncakes and pancakes) but this was the first time I'd had the raw young seeds. They're edible and tender about a week or so after the flowers, and once the pods have formed, but will quickly get harder. Once they're nearly ripe they will be like rock and you'll need to soak them, or crack them like nuts. But right now all we had to do was pop them out of the pods, slit the soft, green outer casing with a thumbnail and eat the white seed inside. They're very nice, fresh and crunchy and just a little bit sweet. Very seasonal, of course.

https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/360000/velka/close-up-of-lotus-pods-and-seeds-background-15946634883za.jpg

For those interested in bitter gourds and how to cook them, Aljazeera English serendipitously had a very interesting article on karela, the small Indian version (which yes, is indeed shaped like a long mouse!). This also features in one of the late, great Rudyard Kipling's poems, 'Mowgli's Song Against People'.


https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/goya-love-india-japan-bitter-gourd-taste-home-200822141612591.html


"...Karela (bitter gourd) is the nemesis of Indian children. Shaped like a long mouse, the gourd has rough ridges that resemble a crocodile's skin (I remember this resemblance when I went to the zoo and saw that giant amphibian napping under the sun, half its body submerged in an artificial swamp). Laterally cut, if someone were to dip the karela in watercolour and then stamp it on a paper, the image would be of a flower with a large visible pistil, and small petals of different lengths and widths. But we could not use karela for art: we had to eat it, compulsorily. And kids dreaded karela.

...Sliced about a centimetre thick (and every karela yields, I guess, about 20 slices), Assamese homes throw them into a wok of hot mustard oil. Chillies are added sometimes, but turmeric and salt are added always. The lid might go on but eventually, and what comes onto the plate are deep-fried karela slices, some of them fried until almost burned and crispy.

Since Assamese households often have more than one dish to go along with the staple of rice - one bowl of lentils, and two vegetables, and fish, obviously, because of the mighty Brahmaputra river flowing through and across Assam - fried karela is the first to be eaten with the rice. The oil gives just enough viscosity for the two to be eaten together. On days when I would return from work late and soaked in Bombay's monsoon rain, karela fry, daal (lentils) and hot rice aplenty became an unusual comforting blanket..."