[Indian Recipes] Pan Fried Teasel Gourd - Wild Bitter Melon

Monsoon is a delightful time of the year for a foodie in my coastal southern Karnataka. There are some very unique fruits and vegetables which are grown wild and only available during monsoon.

One such vegetable is Teasel Gourd, a wild spiny bitter melon (Momordica cochinchinensis) which looks like miniature bitter melon but not nearly as bitter. They are beautiful green in colour and have tiny spines all over them. They are available frozen in Indian stores outside India and are called ‘Kantola’ (in Hindi).

They taste great simply stir fried with some basic Indian spices or deep fried dipped in fresh rice ground into a batter with dry red chillies. But one of my favorite way of eating it is pan fried!

Fresh Teasel Gourds are cut into 1cm thickness slices, dipped into a spicy dry mixture of rice flour, semolina, salt and red chili powder and pan fried! It cooks fast and is easy to make! They are soft and crisp and heavenly! Serve it with rice and curry as a side dish or as an evening snack.

Teasel gourd cut into slices

dry ingredients

coat the slices with it

pan fry till golden brown

• 6-8 Teasel Gourds
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• ¼ cup wheat semolina
• Chilli powder or cayenne pepper – according to taste
• Salt – according to taste

Mix all the dry ingredients together. Taste to make sure it is very spicy. The intensity will come down a lot when it’s fried. Cut the Teasel Gourd into thin slices of 1cm thickness.  Dip it n the dry mixture. If it’s not coated well, dip the gourd slices in water before dipping into dry mixture. Simply pan fry them till golden brown.

This recipe and image sources are referred in website: Lovefoodeat.com. Thanks so much!