Getting by…

Sooner or later I was going to have to take on the balantiyong (bottle gourd). I have nothing against this vegetable, just that it is unremarkable in appearance, if not exactly in taste — like that nerdy classmate you had who went on to top the board exams. “Oh, her?” you say. “Yeah, she’s got a good head on her shoulders.” And then you move on to the next topic.

Good, yes. Interesting, not so much.

Upo to Tagalogs, bottle gourd belongs to the same family as squash, loofah, cucumber, and watermelon . There was a lot of it at the weekend market, and were it not for the dearth of fresh fish (full moon!) and the sorry state of most leafy vegetables (from the infernal heat), I would not have given them a second look. In any case, I figured a “new” dish would liven up that day’s lunch menu of stir-fried mussels and pork adobo.

Seizing on a brainstorm, I took the mussel juices and used that to flavor the balantiyong. Followers of this space know I do not bother with subá/sahog in my vegetable dishes (as for the mussels, I made a dry version of this dish with fermented anchovies and chili). I added water to the mussel stock to tone down the brininess, plus a dash of sweet soy sauce (for color as much as for flavor), and rounded it out with some hon-dashi.

The bottle gourd I bought was young, so there was no need to remove the seeds. As you can see, I threw in sliced pechay (bok choy) for crunch as well as visual contrast (I had chanced upon a new delivery). The gourd lent the stock a subtle sweetness while the bok choy provided a hint of bitterness. Overall, a light and satisfying dish, a perfect foil for the aggressiveness of adobo and ginamós-enhanced tahong. It will not make any best list, just like a great many of us will never see our names on billboards or headlines. Have you ever considered that could be an achievement in itself?