Garden Chef's Needle and Pen

When I posted the Bitter Melon - Cucumber Salad last week, a blogger friend commented that it's like "eating the rainbow." I loved her comment and I said that sounds like a very nice title for my next blog post! Inspired by that, I'm featuring one of my signature dishes, an appetizing dish I learned from my parents and grandmother years back . Another rainbow dish, Astri? :)   Very simple and easy to make, this salad has become a favorite of my colleagues at work. Searching the net would yield many recipes of this salad appetizer, some giving tips on how to remove its bitter taste. Oh yes, some bitter melons are more bitter than the others, that's exactly why many people don't like bitter melon (known as ampalaya in the Philippines). Through the years, I learned that sprinkling some rock salt over the ampalaya and squeezing out the juice remove the bitter flavor. Removing the juice however reduces the nutritional value one can get from this vegetable...

This is not the first time I'm making this salad. I posted about this appetizer early this year. Here it is. Click this link to view.  Garden Chef's Needle and Pen: Bitter Melon and Cucumber Salad . I discovered this salad in Yummy Magazine . For this post, I'm featuring a remake of this salad that I prepared last week when Ana Cristina, my younger daughter celebrated her 21st birthday with her friends at home. The salad was not part of my planned menu ( Creamy Potato Salad , Caesar Crusted Crispy Chicken  Strips , Shrimps-on-Wheel and spaghetti, Tin's fave pasta, which Ayana Grace, my eldest daughter, cooked). Spur of the moment decision, however, caused me to make the salad so that  Billy, my husband, would have some veggies. I always make sure there's vegetable whenever he is at home. Here's the photo of the remake. I didn't regret making this as her friend, Karla, liked it! I'll feature the other dishes in another post. ============...