the Friday stew of the Philippines: mung beans boiled to collapse, then sautéed into garlic, onion, and tomato and thickened with their own starch, with smoked fish or prawns and a handful of bitter leaves
Origin: Philippines
From the journey of Mung Bean.
The Philippines calls the mung bean monggo, a name that came through Spanish from the Portuguese trade and so descends at three removes from the Sanskrit mudga, completing a circle back to where the plant began. What the country does with it is unusual for Southeast Asia, because the Philippines cooks mung as a savoury stew rather than a sweet, and it does so on a fixed day of the week. Ginisang munggo is Friday food: in a Catholic country that historically abstained from meat on Fridays and throughout Lent, a cheap, filling, protein-rich pulse dish that could be made without meat was exactly what was wanted, and the association is strong enough that Filipinos still speak of Friday as monggo day and many households cook it weekly without attaching any religious reason to it any longer. The observant version uses tinapa, smoked fish, or prawns; the unobservant version uses pork, and often a good deal of it. The technique is in two parts and the order matters: the beans are first boiled plain until they collapse, and only then folded into a ginisa, the garlic-onion-tomato base that begins a very large proportion of Filipino dishes. Bitter leaves go in at the end, most traditionally ampalaya tops or malunggay, and their bitterness is the point rather than an accident.
Tinapa, smoked fish, is sold by Filipino grocers and gives the most authentic Lenten version; smoked mackerel is a reasonable substitute. Ampalaya leaves and malunggay (moringa) are the traditional greens and both are sold frozen; spinach or watercress will serve, though watercress comes closest to the intended bitterness. For a wholly vegetarian version, leave out the fish and pork, use light soy sauce in place of the patis, and add a little more garlic. The stew is better on the second day and keeps three days refrigerated, thickening considerably; let it down with water when reheating. It is eaten over rice as a main dish, and in some regions it is served alongside fried fish rather than instead of it. A sweeter, entirely separate use of the same bean is hopia munggo, the mung-paste-filled pastry of the Chinese-Filipino bakeries.
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