Stir fry Smooth Loofah (水瓜, 絲瓜) with Shrimp

This is my all time favorite vegetable. In fact, my family loves except my mom because she is allergy to shell fish. Last week, while I was looking for some vegetable to cook, I spotted this loofah, they looks ok. So I picked up 2 of them for my stir fry. I never know what the western name is for this plant is as we always speak the hokkien name for the veggie and they call it differently in Cantonese. When I was googling the name, interestingly I found there are variations of name for this type of veggie. Even for Chinese itself, some people call it 水瓜, other called it 絲瓜. Anyway, you should able to find this veggie in any of the oriental store especially Indian store.

Ingredients

• 2 Smooth Loofah, removed all the skin and cut it into pieces.
• 1 tbsp of dried shrimp ( I prefer fresh shrimp but since I don’t have any at home, I substitute with dried shrimp)
• 1 glove of garlic, minced
• ½ cup of water
• 3 tsp oil
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Heat oil in a pan, add garlic to the pan and stir fry until it turn yellow.
• Add shrimp and stir fry for another minute or until the fresh shrimp turn pink.
• Add loofah and mix well with the shrimp.
• Add water and bring to boil. Cover the pan with lid and let it cook until loofah get soften.
• Add salt to taste.

While I was searching for the loofah, iI came across this picture that show how you cut the loofah. Not sure if this is the standard way how Chinese cut this veggie, but my family always slice the loofah in this method. Picture below show how they look before it cook. Picture and another recipe provide by POCO Chinese Food Forum.