Hello Everyone! Alas, we’ve come to the end of my mini collaboration series for this month! My last post for this Auguest that my Mom has kindly shared with us is another mung bean recipe that she grew up eating during her childhood years.

If you haven’t read Wednesday’s post, my Mom mentioned there that once a year when her whole family went to visit the province that they were from, they would always bring back one 50kg sack of munggo (mung beans) to the city, where they lived, from their farm. Everyday, Munggo Guisado (Sautéed Mung Bean Soup) was what they had for lunch and dinner, and for merienda, they’d have mung beans as well – there was no escaping the wrath of the mung beans – whether savoury or sweet! After lunch, everyone would take a 2-hour break before they’d be back in the kitchen, preparing and cooking Ginataang Munggo for merienda at 3pm.

Ginataang Munggo is basically roasted or toasted mung beans cooked in coconut milk together with some glutinous rice. It is a simple Filipino dish that can be eaten for either merienda (light afternoon meal or an afternoon snack) or dessert that is best served warm. toasted Mung beans and sticky rice are cooked in coconut milk. Though this dish has been a part of my Mom’s family tradition way back when she was still in her younger years back in the Philippines, today is the first time my Mom cooked this dish and served it to my sister Angela and I. Now that my Mom has passed on her two favourite mung bean recipes from her childhood, she said to me that it is but right that I pass them on to my children to be and keep tradition going – hopefully my children won’t be as fussy as I was before when I used to hate munggo!

PREP TIME 15 MINS | COOKING TIME 30 MINS | SERVES 6-8

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5L boiling water water
• 1 can (400ml) coconut milk
• 1 cup glutinous rice
• 1/2 cup mung beans
• 1/2 cup white sugar

METHOD

1. First, heat up a medium-sized frying pan over medium-high and add the mung beans. Toast until browned, about 8-10 minutes. Be careful as to not over toast them otherwise they will become bitter. Likewise, you can roast the mung beans in the oven for about 10 minutes at 200C.
2. Turn the heat off and set the mung beans aside to cool down.
3. Once the mung beans have cooled down slightly, crack the toasted mung beans using a mortar and pestle, or as my Mom prefers, by using a rolling pin. Set aside.
4. Add the boiling water and sugar to a large pot over medium-high heat and dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved, add the coconut milk and bring to a boil.
5. Once boiling, add the glutinous rice and mung beans, then give it a good stir. Turn the heat down to low and cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until the coconut milk is almost absorbed, stirring once a while to make sure that the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot.
6. Once done, turn the heat off and let it sit in the post for a further 5-10 minutes. Then,transfer to individual serving plates.
7. Share and enjoy! You may serve this either hot or cold. I prefer having this hot with a pinch of salt on top to further enhance the flavours.

And that about wraps up guest blogging month for this year! Many thanks to Jialing, Brendon, Marissa, and my Mom for participating in my very first Auguest series. I’m actually pretty happy with how this all came together in the end. It was hectic at first trying to find the how ever so many bloggers I had in mind for this collaboration series, but then narrowing it down made it much more simpler and much easier to communicate with my friends and fellow bloggers. If you enjoyed this mini collaboration of mine, let me know in the comments section below and I’ll see to organising this into a yearly series 🙂

my Mom and I at Bondi Beach, July 2015

PS: Back in the day in the 70s, canned coconut milk was not a thing yet and so my Mom had to buy a whole matured coconut and manually grate it. From the grated coconut, she then had to squeeze the milk out of it for this dish. This dish was a lot of hard work for her back in the day, which is why she was so confused as to why this dish took no effort at all for her to make, and then she realised it was because we already had coconut milk readily available.

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx