A fitting Asian dish

Wash a young bitter gourd with care and slice it using a scintillatingly-sharp knife. Watch how impeccably thin slivers were procured, listen to the malicious thuds as the metal cut through the vulnerable fruit. Then, immerse them in a bowl of warm saltwater. Let the solution suck the moisture out of the crescent-shaped slices, let them struggle to maintain their turgidity, let them give in into the torturous environment. Saute dice of onion and garlic till aureate-bronze. Add in a mashed salted egg followed by the now-brittle slices. Fry the ingredients together, hear the constant sizzle and smell the idiosyncratic aroma pervading the space. It was supposed to be bitter, but it wasn't. The fragrance was instead an indecipherable mixture of dark chocolate, caramel, pickled cucumber....... let your imagination run wild because my life is undescribable, unpredictable and lastly, fickle. I can't say it is bitter, salty, sweet or sour, it is not an intermediate either; it has no fixed definition.