Beef with Ampalaya in Oyster Sauce

i used to abhor the ampalaya [bitter gourd]. it evoked negative images of my childhood when my dad refused to let us leave the table, even if we were in tears, if we did not even eat 1 slice of this bitter vegetable. it's the only vegetable i never learned to like. i wouldn't even touch any dish that had ampalaya in it.

i had gestational diabetes in my two pregnancies but in the last one i had to have insulin shots daily. so one time, as i was trying to find food to lower my blood sugar levels, i found the ampalaya waiting for me in my chiller. my mother in law bought me some groceries and as she eats the bitter thing almost everyday, she included it.

i cooked it with eggs, squeezing the thinly sliced pieces as much as i could after letting them sit with some salt for a time. and i've been having ampalaya with beaten eggs regularly since.

i had some thin slices of top round beef one time and a gourd of the ampalaya. one popular chinese restaurant dish here is stir frying beef with ampalaya. and so i searched for a recipe on the net and found one which looked easy enough and all the other ingredients were in stock.

so i cooked it accordingly. i found it strange that the author required you to put corn starch in the beef marinade, but i did it anyway.

the result was this. it looks exactly like the dish served in the chinese restaurant and when i ate it, though the ampalaya was mighty bitter [the slices were thicker than i was used to, hence it was difficult to squeeze all all the bitterness out], the beef was super tender very tasty, and had the exact texture chinese restaurant stir fried beef always has. i guess, that's where the cornstarch in the marinade comes in.

i'm back to my regular ampalaya and egg combination, but when the hubby is present, i will occasionally revert to this recipe which he liked.

p.s. check out the blog i got this recipe from. the cook, he calls himself UT-Man, is amazing at documenting his adventures in the kitchen. there's no other blog that has as much filipino dishes as his blog does. i'm sure all filipino food lovers out there will love this site.