Leng Donggua

Winter melon has nourished Asians since earliest times. Today it’s mainly used in soups, so this unusual salad made with slightly pickled winter melon was a delightful surprise for me when I first sampled it at the Bagua Lou restaurant outside of Hangzhou. Juicy and slightly bland, winter melons are large but you can buy them by the slice in Chinese grocers. Westerners sometimes confusingly call them Chinese bitter melon, a name that is also applied to a completely different kind of squa