When my late dog Bear was alive, I used to cook him a brown rice and mung bean dish. One day after I accidentally overcooked the mung beans I posted on Facebook asking my friends for something to do with them. Luckily my sister’s childhood best friend, Lisa, responded that she would make a Filipino dish called Mungoo. She gave me rough directions and here’s what I came up with.
Don’t let the simplicity of the ingredients keep you from making this tasty dish. There’s some kind of synergy going on here which makes it much more than the sum of its parts. Of course, I pressure cook the mung beans but you can just cook them on the stove top and then go on to make the dish. I consider mung to be one of the most digestible beans so I hope that if you’ve never tried them, you will now.
This recipe appears in my cookbook The New Fast Food but even though 2 revisions, somehow the directions didn’t all make it into print. (Ah the joys of publishing). The up side: you get the full recipe and some photos to go along with it.
The start of munggo
The completed Munggo, ready to eat
See the beautiful green choy here before cutting
VEGAN MUNGGO
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon oil optional
- 2-3 cloves garlic minced
- 1 medium onion sliced
- 2 1/2 cups cooked mung beans or 1 cup dry cooked
- 1 cup diced tomatoes or 2 small to medium tomatoes diced
- Juice of 1 lime
- 2-3 cups fresh baby spinach
- 1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a sauté pan over medium high heat or use a dry nonstick skillet. Add the garlic and sauté for a minute but don’t let it brown. Add the onion and sauté it for 5 minutes or until it’s translucent, adding a tablespoon or two of liquid to prevent sticking if necessary. Add the cooked beans and the tomato and cook for another few minutes until the tomato is incorporated. Add the lime juice and spinach. Cook until the spinach is wilted. Add salt, to taste. Serve hot.
Dear Jill…is it Mongoo or Monggo? You have it spelled both ways!
I think that the true title is Munggo. There might be other ways to spell it, too.
If you have used a bigger pressure cooker to pressure cook the moong, it will tend to get overcooked. There are smaller Inner Lid Pressure cookers from Prestige which work best when you are pressure cooking only one ingredient. You can use this to cook a complete rice meal as well.
I have heard about these pressure cookers but do not own one. I would love to find out more.
I have heard about other types of pressure cookers but have not used them. I am very interested in stainless items that can be used in the pressure cooker. Do you know if any exist other than idli makers Mehul?
I would appreciate any leads.
Just curious, but those look like tatsoi leaves, not bok choy. I assume that would work as well?
(Incidentally, for anyone who wants to grow either of these Asian greens, they’re really easy, and at least with the bok choy, you can continue to harvest the leaves “cut and come” even after the plant bolts, the leaves don’t become bitter as they do on lettuces, spinach, etc.)
This is actually a type of (Asian) choy that does look like tatsoi but it is different.
You are correct that the leaves of this choy and the tatsoi are sweeter than most of the other cruciferous types of greens.
The leaves look like tatsoi but they are truly a tiny bok choy type green. I love the idea of the cut and come again which is what I do with my kale when I can. Great idea.
I would actually sprout the mung beans and add them last. I think it is more nutritional and has a nutty texture. They sprout in just a few days. I keep them on hand as a staple.
Barbara,
I like sprouted mung beans, too, and I would likely add them both ways, just for fun.