Gourds of India - Nenua Kadala
10 February 2026
I wrote the introduction to this series 5 years ago. Despite continuing my rant about the concept, I never pursued this because I was never satisfied with the quality of the content I could give out. The breakeven point has been reached. The cost of keeping these secrets to myself is now much higher than the regret of producing subpar blog post. Who’s reading this anyway except my future self? The compromise is straightforward - I am going to link to recipes and talk about it, as compared to posting my own recipe videos.
There is a whole class of recipes which involve bottle, ridge or sponge gourd combined with a pulse or legume. In various parts of India, ridge gourd and sponge gourd are called turai and nenua in all possible permutations, but they do have subtly different textures. Ridge gourd has an additional feature that you can make a chutney; more on that in a future post.
Let us first focus on sponge gourd with tyson black chickpea, referred to as nenua and kadala henceforth, because that’s what I call them. This is a dry-ish sabzi which you can have as a side to a rice based meal, or have with wheat chapati directly. Both kadala and nenua have an earthy aftertaste. The nenua adds a bit of sweetness if cooked tenderly, which will balance the heat from the spices. It is a good balance of fiber and protein.
A couple of recipe links are provided. Notice how they may interchange the sponge gourd with ridge gourd, which should not make much difference but ridge gourd has a thicker skin. If you remove it entirely you have too less of a fibrous texture. If you choose to keep it, you have too much of the fibrous texture. Cheeku recommends you use sponge gourd for this recipe.