For nearly 15 years, Peter and Rita Zimmermann have regarded Thailand as their second home, spending five to six months of the year in Bangkok to escape the European winter and then returning to Germany in the summer. Both gardening enthusiasts, their home in Freiburg in the Black Forest area near the German border with Switzerland and France is full of botanical reminders of sunny, tropical Thailand.
SWEET STUFF: Chayote fruit and shoots. In Thailand it’s known by different names, including ‘fak meo’ or ‘mala wan’ (sweet melon). PHOTO: NORMITA THONGTHAM
Colourful bougainvilleas and sunflowers surround their patio and a herd of Thai sculptured elephants made from wire and overgrown with a German native plant called liguster (Ligustrum vulgare) add life to their garden, which is lush with climbing vines and walls of greenery. They also have a vegetable garden where they grow various Thai herbs, including lemongrass and kaffir lime.
Wherever they go, the Zimmermanns are always on the lookout for seeds they can grow in their garden. Their quest for an elusive seed prompted Mr Zimmermann to email me to say that they have been trying in vain to gather information about a vegetable they had eaten in a Thai restaurant in Bangkok. ”They cooked it fai daeng [red hot], and it was tasty and crunchy,” he wrote. ”We would like to grow this kind of vegetable in our garden in Germany but we have not been able to get the seeds anywhere.
”The vegetable we are looking for is yod mara, or yod mala, and sometimes also called yod mel. It seems to be the sprigs of bitter cucumber or bitter melon, at least this is what people tell us. The sprigs and leaves are a little bit hairy.”
TOPIARY TUSKERS: Left top, sculptured elephants are overgrown with a German native plant at Peter and Rita Zimmermann’s garden in Germany. Left, bougainvilleas from Thailand flower well on the Zimmermanns’ patio in Germany. PHOTO: COURTESY OF RITA ZIMMERMANN
He added that Mrs Zimmermann had asked around in Chatuchak for seeds but could not find any. ”People say it might come from Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai. We don’t even know what the ‘cucumbers’ or ‘melons’ look like, so we cannot buy the fruit.”
Bitter melon, also known as bitter gourd (Momordica charantia, known in Thai as mara or mala), is one of my favourite vegetables and I know its tender leaves are not crunchy when cooked. The mention of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai made me suspect that Mr Zimmermann could be asking about the wrong vegetable, as bitter melon is cultivated throughout Thailand. However, bitter melon leaves are a bit hairy, too, especially the wild variety which one can sometimes find in the market.
Bitter melon is reputed to be effective in treating type 2 diabetes, as it contains a compound similar to insulin. Researchers have also found that it contains alkaloids that they say effectively controls hypertension and sugar levels in blood. However, as its name implies, it is bitter and therefore not palatable to some people.
Although I was almost certain bitter melon was not the vegetable Mr Zimmermann was looking for, I sent him a photo of the plant anyway. Sure enough, it was the wrong vegetable. ”I am afraid it’s different from the plant we are looking for,” he wrote back. ”We have seen bitter gourd leaves in the markets and they are thin and shiny, while ‘our’ yod mara was much thicker in the stems [crunchy when eaten] and the leaves are matt.
”I fully understand if you have no time to follow up and I thank you for the efforts already taken by you. Whenever we succeed in finding the right seeds, I will inform you,” he wrote.
By this time I was certain the vegetable that caught the Zimmermanns’ fancy was chayote (Sechium edule). A fairly recent addition to Thailand’s repertoire of vegetables, Thais do not seem to know what to call it, and it is variously known as fak meo, probably because the Hmong tribesmen, also known as Meo, were the first to grow it on the hills of northern Thailand, and mala, probably because, like the bitter melon, it is a member of the Cucurbitaceae family, which also includes melons, cucumbers and squash. To differentiate it from bitter melon, it is called mala wan (sweet melon).
Like all members of the Cucurbitaceae family, it is a vine and needs a trellis on which to climb. Its young shoots, when stir-fried, are crunchy. The pear-shaped fruit has a light green skin with flesh that is white, succulent and crispy, and cooked as a vegetable. A native of the tropical and subtropical climates of Central and South America, I am sure it can be grown in Germany.
The bad news is that seeds are not obtainable because they die when taken from the fruit; to propagate it, the ripe fruit is planted in the soil.
The caretaker on our farm used to grow it, and I have seen fully mature fruits sprouting while they were still on the vine.
Email nthongtham@gmail.com.
BUT IT’S GOOD FOR YOU: Despite its taste, bitter gourd is health-boosting. PHOTO: NORMITA THONGTHAM
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About the author
Writer: Normita Thongtham
Position: Writer
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