Moqua

Here is our first veggie experiment. This, my friends, is a MOQUA. I know, it pretty much looks like your average gourd. Which is why I chose it for the first veggie experiment. How can you mess up a gourd, right?

This is what it looks like inside.

I think I might have bought this a little under-ripe. It was pretty firm.

Apparently this is a quite common food in China. In fact, they have a soup they make from it that is supposed to be good and that they serve often, in some areas with every meal.

I looked for that recipe and could not find it, but online it also said it could be served raw. I also found a couple of recipes, most of which involved sea food so I skipped those and decided to go for the raw version.

This is how I would describe it: When I first cut into it, it smelled JUST like a cucumber. It's quite a bit larger than any cuke I've seen though. As I peeled it and cut it, it was a lot more firm than a cucumber as well.

Once cut up, it looks a lot like a zucchini. If I looked at moqua sliced I would think it was zucchini. If I smelled it, I would think it was cucumber. The taste? Pretty much like cucumber, although more firm and more bitter.

Our verdict: It was pretty good. We would serve it again. In fact, we had some leftover (these are fairly good sized) and I'm going to saute it with some olive oil, onion, and garlic and I think that will be really good.

Cost: 78 cents (45 cents a pound)