The Sweet Rewards of Bitter Melon

On broad banana leaves, dishes of sweet soy dipping sauce, a creamy pork liver sauce, a bubbling pinakbet, some sticky rice and a raw salad of slivered bitter melon and red onion flank a crackling lechon like planets orbiting the sun. This is the final savory course of the kamayan dinner, a Filipino family-style meal, at Naks in the East Village of Manhattan. Small but mighty, raw and crisp, the vibrantly green…