Castillo’s Mung Bean Stew with Shrimp & Pork

This dish is pretty much healthy as it is but by using fatless pork ham meat and olive or smart balance oil, it becomes unfallibly healthy!  It contains loads of fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients and virtually no carbs (what’s up my gays, gals, metros, ?!? let me hear it wut wut)  Sorry about that but it is definitely something to be excited about. 

You will see on the following the basic recipe I used to prepare this dish.  In this particular dish I decided to add shrimp (I didn’t come up with this on my own, shrimp is included in some recipes).  What most recipes leave out is making the broth.  You don’t particulary need a broth but I find it necessary when making any kind of soups or stews.  For this dish you can either make a pork broth from bones or shrimp broth from the head and shells or both.  In this case, I only went with shrimp broth.  I bought the shrimp with the head and shells.  I de-shelled and deheaded the shrimp, boiled the shrimp heads and shells in some water with salt.  I then mashed it and strained it.  I add the peeled shrimp before the spinach.

An interesting thing that comes up when making this dish when I was a child was the fact that there is an opportunity for dessert embedded in the cooking process!  After boiling the mung beans, you can take a cup’s worth, cool it in the fridge, add milk of some sort and sugar and Voilà, a tasty high fiber/protein dessert.  I did just that tonight but instead used unsweetened soymilk and splenda – what a wonderful life indeed!

Without further adieu:

Ingredients

• 1 cup munggo (mung beans)
• 3 cups water
• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1/2 lb. pork, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, chopped
• 2 cups water or broth
• 1 tbsp. patis (fish sauce)
• salt to taste
• 1 cup ampalaya leaves (bittermelon)  or substitute spinach or watercress

 

 

Cooking Procedures :

1. Boil mung beans in water until soft and easily mashed. Set aside.
2. In a pan, heat oil. Cook pork until it turns slightly brown.
3. Add garlic, onions and tomatoes. Sauté for a few seconds until tomatoes wilted.
4. Pour in water or broth and add boiled mung beans.
5. Season with patis and salt to taste. Bring to boil and let it simmer until thick.
6. Add ampalaya leaves or substitute with spinach. Cover and remove from heat. Serve hot.

This dish is tradionally served with rice, most particularly white rice.  Personally I try not to eat white rice because it is no longer a whole grain.  Lately I’ve been using 1 to 2 ratio of quinoa to brown rice mix as my grain.  I am so happy that my fabulous neighber S was able to enjoy the meal with me and give me her thoughts.  She called it “homy” and “healthy soul food.”  I agree S!  I didn’t think it was appropriate to use that as the title of this particular post because I’m hoping that you will find that all of it is “healthy soul food.” I also call it traditional yet refined.  I hope one day to be able to serve you meals like this in Atlanta and other cities.