The Pantry / Bottle Gourd
Bottle Gourd
Lagenaria siceraria · Lauki · ghiya · dudhi · calabash
Grown for vessels before it was grown for eating.
What it is
Bottle gourd is a long pale-green gourd with dense white flesh and soft seeds at the centre. Cooked, it turns translucent and almost sweet, and it has effectively no flavour of its own — it exists to carry a tempering. Mature fruit is dried and hollowed for vessels and instruments, which is where the name comes from.
Where it comes from
One of the oldest domesticated plants in the world, carried across continents in prehistory for its shell rather than its flesh. In India it is a summer and monsoon staple everywhere, and on the Gangetic plain it is everyday household cooking rather than anything ceremonial.
What it's called
Lauki · ghiya · dudhi · kaddu in some northern usage, confusingly, since that also means pumpkin. Calabash or bottle gourd in English.
In the kitchen
Peeled, cubed and cooked down with mustard oil, cumin, turmeric and tomato until it collapses; also grated into kofta or into a milk sweet. It gives out a lot of water, so it wants little or no added liquid.
What we know about the claims
This is the one gourd worth a genuine caution. Occasional fruit accumulates cucurbitacins and tastes strongly bitter, and drinking raw bitter bottle gourd juice has caused serious poisoning and deaths in India. Taste a raw sliver before cooking; if it is bitter, throw the whole thing away. Cooking does not remove it.
Choosing and buying
Widely stocked fresh. Choose firm, unblemished, heavy fruit with taut pale skin; a light or spongy gourd is old and its seeds will be hard.