Stuffed Snake Gourd with Coconut Flour and Chickpea Flour

Snake gourd has a distinctive taste and texture that I grew to love thanks to my mom's cooking. There are just two or three different ways in which she usually cooks it, almost always with coconut or with lentils or both.

The one issue I've always had with snake gourd is that it can be too mature and bitter if not picked when tender. Mature snake gourd tends to be woody and chewy, and not suitable for consumption.

This time, I was in the mood for stuffed snake gourd. Much like stuffed bitter gourd, it is easy enough to scoop out the pulpy innards and par-boil the snake gourd cylinders in some salted water.

The filling or stuffing was the tougher decision. Any old stuffing would be fine, like, seasoned ground meat, flavored brown rice and barley, Textured Vegetable Protein TVP, beans or lentils with quinoa and veggies... but, I wanted something different, something easy to make, yet flavorful. So, I turned to my newest obsession: Coconut Flour.

Chickpea flour and Coconut Flour stuffing:

Ingredients
¼ cup coconut flour
¼ cup chickpea flour
¼ cup finely diced onions
¼ cup finely dices tomatoes
¼ cup cooked chickpeas
salt to taste
2 Tablespoon coconut oil

Simply heat the oil in a pan, add the onions and tomatoes, saute a bit, then add the flours, keep the heat at low and stir continuously till the flours turn a light nutty brown, not too dark. Stir in the chickpeas and turn off heat. That's it.

The filling would be powdery flour mixture that might have a beady breadcrumb-ish texture, which will clump up nicely when packed tight. And that's what I was going for.

Fill the boiled snake gourd cylinders and bake them in a 425°F oven for about 15 minutes, with a touch of oil brushed on. Turn the stuffed snake gourd cylinders in the oven half way through cooking to brown on all sides.

Serve warm, garnished with spring onions and cilantro, drizzled with Lemongrass Flavored Coconut Milk Sauce as in the Stuffed Kohlrabi recipe.