Actually, I still haven't done a thing with either bag, but the Mister recently pulled out the beautiful Mangoes and Curry Leaves by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid* and decided to actually cook from it. Fascinating what great ideas that man comes up with. And he decided to look for recipes using mung beans, because we have them in the cupboard.
He found a recipe for Nepalese Mountain Dal, followed it, and we ate leftover rice and thick, brown, uninteresting dal for a week.
I concluded that I just like lentils better than mung beans.
He concluded that we haven't given mung beans a fair chance.
There's a third possibility that what the recipe calls for ("mung dal") is somehow different than what we have (mung beans) and some searching on wikipedia suggests this is at least partially true. Chinese cuisine seems to favor the green, husk-on "mung beans" we have (similar to what's pictured) while on the Indian subcontinent split, husked mung dal is eaten, which creates a softer, yellow, lentil-like mush.
Whether I'm right or not, the Mister is correct that we need to do give mung beans (the green ones we have) another chance. Here's where my helpful readers come in. Anyone have any suggestions?
*Thanks Molly!
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3 comments:
Since you referenced Chinese cooking, I took a quick look in "the Chinese kitchen" by Deh-Ta Hsiung. Only recipes for mung bean sprouts to be found, which he recommends giving a quick stir-fry with scallions, red chilies, oil, salt, and sugar. Never tried this recipe, but I really enjoy this book. I've pretty much loved every recipe I've tried from it (but admittedly haven't tried recipes with super-exotic ingredients)...
Some of the mung bean recipes on epicurious.com look pretty tasty,too.
Thanks again Molly!
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