Paying homage to the humble bitter gourd
By Eu Hooi Khaw
The restaurant may not look like much but the food is cheap and good... a real winner.
OCT 3 — I think it’s brilliant that there is a restaurant in Petaling Jaya that focuses almost entirely on bitter gourd. The menu has to be seen to be believed. It’s in small print, with hardly any spacing in between the lines, so as to cram more dishes in. Possibly after eating bitter gourd at Restoran Fu Kua, your eyesight will improve as well.
We had four bitter gourd dishes, and a drink of bitter gourd and kedondong with sour plum. I could feel my blood sugar going instantly down, which I promptly brought up on arriving home, with a slice of mooncake!
We should have gone for durians after this — we must talk about balance right? But we couldn’t fit in anything else. The portions of food were large.
In case you didn’t know, bitter gourd helps purify the blood, enhances digestion and stimulates the liver. It’s rich in phosphorous, iron, copper and potassium as well as vitamins A, B1, B2 and C. It’s believed to have healing effects on diabetes (by helping to balance blood sugar), constipation, psoriasis, respiratory problems, alcoholism, piles and diarrhoea.
We got the Fu Kua supervisor to recommend dishes (it’s easier than reading the fine print). So we got bitter gourd with salted egg, their famous bitter gourd soup, bitter gourd with neem yue (a catfish) and bitter gourd with char choy, celery and minced pork.
Fried bitter gourd with salted egg is very popular... one spoonful and you will understand why.
I like it that there was little oil in all of these dishes. Even the fried fillets of neem yue in black bean sauce with bitter gourd which were so good. The fried fish had the right texture — sticky, crispy skin, and smooth flesh, with not so many bones. The black bean sauce with ginger and red chilli was excellent with the more chunky slices of bitter gourd and fish.
The neem yue is a local river fish: it’s well known in Tanjung Malim. I had a look at the fish in the tank, it has dark skin and hardly moves, a little like the soon hock. I’ve come to the conclusion that if the fish hardly moves, it’s bound to taste good. And the neem yue was truly exceptional.
The bitter gourd soup has balls of minced pork and pork slices in it, tomato and ginger and of course bitter gourd, a generous portion of it. I liked the bitter aftertaste of the soup tempered with the natural sweetness from the stock. It was also lightly aromatic with sesame oil.
Bitter gourd with salted egg is very popular here, and no wonder. There are bits of salted egg yolk and threads of egg white in this classic bitter gourd dish, and as we know, salted egg goes well with everything.
I simply loved the textures and taste of the thin bitter gourd slices against char choy (a salted, preserved vegetable), celery, black fungus, red chilli and thin strips of pork in the next dish. I would certainly come back for this one, besides the fish, and bitter gourd with salted egg. The char choy added smoothness, and a salty tang to the dish.
The famous bittergourd soup is good to the last drop.
It’s really amazing how many bitter gourd dishes this restaurant can turn out. It can be fried with: petai, pumpkin, lotus root and beansprouts, or with pork leg, and kampong chicken. There are even noodle dishes like beehoon fish meat with bitter gourd, and yee meen with bitter gourd in black bean sauce, not to mention fried rice.
But there are dishes without bitter gourd, such as braised pork ribs with peanuts, mixed mushrooms with minced meat, Teochew-style pork leg with peanut and baked prawns with salted egg. I will have to go back to try these.
If you need to bring up your sugar level again, there are desserts such as yam Teochew-style and peanut broth or Far Sang Wu.
It’s inexpensive eating here. The food was enough for four and our bill came up to RM59.90, out of which we paid RM30 for the fish, RM6 for the soup, RM8 for the bitter gourd with salted egg, and RM10 for the dish with char choy and celery. The bitter gourd drink was RM3.90.
Restoran Fu Kua is located at 21, Jalan SS23/15, Taman SEA, Petaling Jaya. Tel: 016-243 4233, 016-219 1548.
Tags: bitter gourd, fu kua
