Bitter 'karelas', mother's recipe and mobile phone...

I love karelas (bitter gourd). But every time my domestic help cooked it, I found it to be too bitter. Then I remembered that my mother was once telling someone, maybe sixty years back, to peel the karelas and put salt around them and leave them like that for some time, then wash and cook. So I repeated it to my domestic help. She dutifully did that. But I found the karelas to be still bitter. Maybe I forgot some step from my mother's recipe.

Then it was the turn of my domestic help to do some research. She used her mobile and rang up her mother in the village who advised her to soak the karelas in curd water before cooking. It was done and last night I had an excellent karela bhaji for dinner.

By the way when I was a child I used to think that 'ek karela doosra neem chara' meant that the vine of karela climbing up on the neem tree would make the karelas even more bitter...till I was told that 'neem' in this phrase meant half...

Bachpan kay din bhi kya din thay... ...