RomantiCurious

I’m not much of a cook. If anything, I would say I cook to survive. Still, I do make the effort to make my dishes palatable – even if they might not look tasty. The way I learned how to cook for myself is by experimenting with substituting ingredients I like. I try to follow recipes too but most of the time, I just eyeball things.

Mung beans or monggo, is one dish that I crave now and then. It’s simple to cook, although it takes some time, and the ingredients are pretty simple too. I usually just use squash and fried tofu as additional ingredients to the beans. But this time, I wanted to try it with coconut cream.

But first, I needed to make it easier to boil the beans to soften them. So, I washed the beans and left them on a metal bowl overnight. The next morning, I was surprised to find that they had sprouted.

I was thinking maybe I should just make it into something else instead; a stir-fry with other veggies maybe? But, I was craving for the taste of monggo, so I went ahead and cooked the dish.

Since I didn’t follow a recipe and just cooked this from memory; I won’t put the recipe here. There are many recipes of it online. I have seen this dish cooked with just 3 ingredients like I’ve done but also with more ingredients like tomatoes and even pork. I wanted to keep mine plant-based and simple but I wanted something different too. That’s why I thought of adding coconut cream.

I ended up with a milky stew of course which didn’t look too appetizing really. But I think it was still tasty and even creamier even though some of the sprouted beans gave it an unfamiliar texture.

My friend also enjoyed it with rice. As for me, I like adding in a dash of soy sauce for added flavor. I usually don’t make my dishes too salty anyway.

I would say this food experiment was a success. However, next time, I will cook the beans immediately after washing it so it doesn’t sprout.