Calabash

The calabash or bottle gourd or opo squash (not to be confused with the calabaza) is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. For this reason, one of the calabash subspecies is known as the bottle gourd. The fresh fruit has a light green smooth skin and a white flesh. However the rounder varieties are called Calabash gourds whereas the longer and slimmer kinds are usually well known as bottle gourds.

The calabash was one of the first cultivated plants in the world, grown not for food but as a container. It was named for the calabash tree (Crescentia cujete).

Culinary and other uses
The calabash, as a vegetable, is frequently used in southern Chinese cuisine as either a stir-fry or in a soup. The Chinese name for calabash is hulu (simplified Chinese: 葫芦; traditional Chinese: 葫蘆; pinyin: húlu) or huzi (Chinese: 葫子; pinyin: húzi) in Mandarin.

In Japan, the species is known as hyōtan (瓢箪, 瓢簞?) or yūgao (夕顔?), with the former word referring particularly to the larger-fruiting variety whose fruits are used mostly for making containers or other handicrafts and the latter referring to the smaller-fruiting variety whose fruits are more edible. Names that are used to refer particularly to the fruit of one or another variety of this species include fukube (瓠, 瓢, ふくべ?) and hisago (瓠, 匏, 瓢, ひさご?). It is most commonly sold in the form of dried, marinated strips known as kanpyō and is commonly used as an ingredient for making makizushi (rolled sushi).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_Gourd
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