Though it is a fruit, there is nothing sweet about goya–also known as bitter melon or bitter gourd, it resembles a very bumpy cucumber and is in the same family as pumpkins, squash and gourds. It is traditionally eaten in Japan, China, Vietnam, India and other South and Southeast Asian countries.
this is the Vietnamese variety of bitter gourd
C. says that while he was in Okinawa (where goya is very popular) people said the reason Okinawans live so long is because they eat lots of pork and lots of goya! I can’t verify this, but it sounds reasonable enough, I suppose. One dish that is very popular there is goya champuru which is a stir-fried dish that features goya and often pork, eggs, onion or garlic and other seasonings.
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I’m relatively new to the world of banh mi. Growing up in a small town in Nova Scotia meant that I had little exposure to all the exotic cuisines of the world. As a chubby eleven year old I liked to watch non-cable (we had no need of frivolities like cable, we had the great outdoors. Right?) cooking shows such as ‘Wok with Yen’ and James Barber’s classic ‘Urban Peasant’, so I did know that foods aside from the ubiquitous meat n’ potatoes or fish n’ chips did exist, I just hadn’t had much experience with them. The inaccessibility of these wondrous and delectable-sounding foods made them that much more appealing, of course. I began trying to cook some things on my own, but was usually over-zealous with seasonings (due to an inability to follow recipes that haunts me to this day), so had varying degrees of success. 
