Like a rolling gourd

My first day attempt at buying salad vegetables in a London supermarket was an unusual experience. The typical salads, an Indian fresh from India is used to eating, is quite different from what I was expected to eat in London. Standing by the vegetable aisle in the market, I noticed that there weren’t any sprouted green (moong) beans, a variety of leafy greens which proudly proclaimed, ‘ washed and cleaned’.

Growing up in a tropical country makes you naturally suspicious of all things unwashed and uncooked, and thus my natural paranoia kicked in. Steering clear of the rockets, watercress’  and lettuce I reached the cucumbers. An innocuous  pile of smooth,  dark green coloured vegetables, not giving in to my natural scepticism I concluded that cucumber grown in different countries can look different.I left the store with a selection of vegetables quite content.

Attempting  to eat my foreign cucumber was quite disheartening, It was thick skinned, chewy and had large seeds inside, it also lacked the juicy splash in your mouth after biting in. I realized then that I was crunching into a courgette/zucchini, a variety of gourd and not a simple cucumber.

All over India people eat and cultivate a variety of gourds and squashes, these include; cucumbers, pumpkins, ridge gourd, bitter gourd, snake gourd, squash, Tinda gourd, snake gourd, bottle gourd and sponge gourd.

So my unintended discovery of the courgette wasn’t as disastrous. For the next few weeks, I happily cooked Indian vegetable curries and stir fry recipes, which are supposed to have gourds in them, with courgettes and they taste divine.

Written by Amrita Dasgupta - Visit my blog for more food and travel stories
I love to travel, discover new things, experience new cultures and then I get back home and experiment with the new food and recipes I discovered on my travels. My blog is about all those life experiences. If you’ve enjoyed this post, keep in touch with Drifting Traveller on Twitter and Facebook or by adding my blog to your RSS feed. Follow my blog with Bloglovin or Networked Blogs! If you really like reading the Drifting Traveller why not share it with people you know who'd like to read it too.