If you shop in local wet markets, you've probably recently seen heaps of what looks like long, pale, hollow-stemmed spinach. This is tung choi, or water spinach. Many noodle shops simply blanch it and serve it with a sauce made from preserved bean curd, rice wine, chillies and soy sauce. It's also delicious stir-fried with garlic, preserved brown beans, chillies and soy or fish sauce. This vegetable does not taste good al dente - be sure to cook it until it's quite wilted or it will be tough. The stems take longer to cook, so cut the vegetable in half (it's too long to fit in most woks anyway), start stir-frying the stems and add the leaves after a few minutes. If you have any rendered chicken fat sitting in your fridge, add in a spoonful, and it will give the cooked vegetables a wonderfully silky texture.
Many people find bitter melon an acquired taste, but there are some tricks to making the vegetable a little milder. You've probably seen these wrinkled melons (below) in the markets - they're either dark or pale green, and can be long and thin or short and fat. The pale green, fat melons are not as bitter. When you cut the melons, the seeds inside will be reddish-orange or white, but this difference doesn't seem to affect the flavour. Halve the melons, discard the seeds and interior, and slice. To tone down the bitterness, you can blanch the slices, or sprinkle them with salt and let them sit for a while, before rinsing in cold water. Cook with marinated chicken, pork or beef. A delicious treat is stuffed bitter melons - cut off the ends and scrape out the seeds to leave a hollow tube, then stuff with a mixture of pork, chopped fresh shrimp, seasonings (soy sauce, rice wine, salt, pepper, sugar, cornstarch and lots of fresh coriander). Cut into thick slices and steam or braise.