Bitter heart…

I remember when I was teaching and staying in Kanowit in the late 70’s up to the early 80’s, I did not do any cooking in  the first two years when I was staying in a little room/cubicle above one of the shophouses in town. Then they completed the first housing estate in the town – the Kanowit Garden…and I was able to rent the upper floor of a terrace house, sharing with a colleague of mine and I stayed there for the next three years.

We were teaching in the afternoon as we were squatting at the premises of a primary school and they had their lessons in the morning…and every morning, I would have to go to town to buy things to cook and eat for the day. We did not have a refrigerator so the marketing had to be done daily and I had to do all my cooking on a kerosene stove provided. It was all right and we got along fine, no problem at all.

I remember, however, that sometimes we would not be able to get fresh meat so I would used some of the canned stuff as an ingredient when I fried vegetables…and that was perfectly all right too. The food tasted fine and we always enjoyed our meals and had our fill before going to school to teach…and heating up the leftovers when we came back to finish everything off for dinner. We did not have any fridge, remember?

Well, just the other day, I found half a bitter gourd in the fridge and I had a little bit of SPAM left so I decided to use that to cook the vegetable. Somehow that reminded me of what I used to do during those good ol’ days when I was in Kanowit – using canned meat to cook vegetables.

These were the ingredients I used:

– bitter gourd and a fresh chili, both thinly sliced, garlic, finely chopped and SPAM,. cut into little cubes.

I heated a bit of oil in the wok and fried the garlic till golden brown…

…and then I added the SPAM…

…and fried it for a while before adding the chili and the bitter gourd…

I added a little bit of water to cook the bitter gourd but just a bit – there wasn’t any need for a lot as I had sliced the vegetable till very thin so it would cook very fast and very easily.

I added a bit of salt and msg, according to taste, and once all the moisture had dried up, I broke an egg into the wok…

Finally, I mixed everything together and stirred till the egg was cooked…

…before I scooped everything out and served it in a plate…

Was it nice? Well,I must say that it was…but if you do not wish to use canned meat, you can always substitute it with prawns or sliced fresh meat. That would be just as nice as well, I’m sure…