Once upon a time, there was a little girl who refused to finish her bowl of monggo. She usually loved this warm and hearty mung bean stew, but it was awfully difficult to eat on this particular evening.
She often ate her mung bean stew with shrimp, fish, pork, and chicken, which all lent great contrasting textures alongside the tender mung beans. Tonight’s monggo recipe contained shredded pieces of fish.
The little girl was having difficulty eating the mung bean stew because of the rogue fish bones hiding among the little beans! It was torture swallowing multiple fish bones with each bite, of this otherwise delicious dish.
After what seemed like hours, the little girl’s grandfather had enough. He quickly spoon-fed the little girl two large spoonfuls of the remaining stew.
After swallowing a couple more fishbones, the little girl was glad that it was finally over. On that day, she vowed never to eat or make fish monggo ever again.
That was way more dramatic than what really happened, but I really do make my mung bean stews with any protein besides fish. I just don’t want to take that chance again!
Monggo is packed with umami flavor, and is a very filling dish. My grandfather used to cook it for us often, and he would primarily used fish and shrimp as the meat.
I love the seafood flavor that fish sauce or shrimp paste adds to this dish, and I highly recommend you use them instead of salt. Follow the recipe in the video below, which is my boneless rendition of this comforting recipe.