Some meals don’t need expensive ingredients to feel special. A pot of soft mung beans, fatty pork, loads of garlic, ginger and fresh greens is sometimes all you need to bring the taste of home straight to the table. Mung beans simmered with pork jowl, bunga ng malunggay, spinach, garlic, ginger and fish sauce into a rich Filipino stew.
Ginisang monggo must be one of the most flexible dishes in Filipino cuisine. Ask ten Filipino families how they prepare theirs and you will probably get ten different answers, yet somehow all of them will still taste unmistakably like monggo.
At its simplest, it can be nothing more than mung beans simmered until soft, then flavoured with lots of garlic, onion, tomatoes and perhaps a little pork and/or tinapa. But from that humble base, you can take it almost anywhere.
Some households cook it with pork belly, others with shrimp. Tinapa gives it that wonderful smoky character, while chicharon or lechon kawali can turn it into something considerably richer. I have even seen versions using canned sardines, which makes perfect sense for a dish that has always been about practicality.
Then there are the vegetables. Malunggay leaves are probably among the most familiar, but dahon ng ampalaya, alugbati, spinach and kalabasa all find their way into different pots.
For this Ginisang Monggo with Bunga ng Malunggay, however, I wanted something a little different.
Rediscovering Bunga ng Malunggay
Recently we discovered an Indian grocery in Glenfield that sells many tropical ingredients we rarely see nowadays in New Zealand. Among them were bunga ng malunggay, those long moringa drumsticks that instantly reminded me of flavours I had almost forgotten.
Most Filipinos are probably more familiar with malunggay leaves, especially in dishes like tinola. The pods are different. They have their own earthy, vegetal flavour and a wonderful soft interior once properly cooked.
Seeing them immediately gave me ideas, and after using them in dinengdeng, putting them into monggo seemed like another natural choice.
The result tasted wonderfully familiar but different enough to make an everyday Filipino dish interesting again.
Why Filipinos Love Monggo
Mung beans have been part of Filipino cooking for generations because they tick almost every box needed for practical home cooking. They are inexpensive, nutritious, filling, easy to store and capable of feeding an entire family from a relatively small quantity.
Dried mung beans also keep for a long time. Before refrigerators became commonplace, that shelf stability mattered even more. Families could keep beans in the pantry and turn them into a substantial meal whenever fresh ingredients became scarce.
And once mung beans cook long enough, they naturally create their own creamy broth. There is no need for flour, cream or any other thickener. The beans slowly break apart and give ginisang monggo its characteristic hearty texture.
Ladle that generously over freshly steamed rice and you have proper Filipino comfort food.
What About Monggo Friday?
Of course, you cannot talk about ginisang monggo without mentioning Friday.
“Monggo Friday” is so ingrained in Filipino food culture that many carinderias still prepare monggo specifically on Fridays. Catholic abstinence traditions helped associate Fridays with meals that avoided meat, particularly during Lent, making inexpensive legumes and fish practical alternatives.
Over generations, the habit remained even when the religious restrictions were not being observed.
There are also plenty of practical explanations that Filipinos have attached to the tradition. Friday was traditionally the end of the working week, when the household budget might be running low. Dried mung beans were inexpensive and always available, making monggo an ideal tipid meal.
Whatever combination of religion, economics and habit cemented the tradition, Friday and monggo now seem almost inseparable in Filipino food culture.
Ironically, many modern Friday monggo dishes contain pork, chicharon or other meats anyway. Tradition has clearly evolved.
Making This Version Extra Rich
My version today certainly isn’t meat-free.
Instead of ordinary pork belly, I am using pork jowl, which contains plenty of fat and connective tissue. Cooking it slowly in the pan allows some of that fat to render, and that becomes the flavourful cooking medium for the aromatics.
And there are a lot of aromatics.
I use an entire head of garlic here because monggo and garlic are one of those combinations where I don’t believe in being conservative. Gently frying that garlic in rendered pork fat creates an incredible base before the onions and thick slices of ginger join the pan.
The ginger is equally important. Pork jowl can be extremely rich, so the sharp aromatic warmth of ginger helps balance all that fat.
Fish sauce then provides the familiar salty umami backbone that pulls everything together.
Bunga ng Malunggay Changes the Dish
The bunga ng malunggay goes in towards the end because it needs enough time to soften without completely losing its structure.
Young pods work best. Older drumsticks can become fibrous, so depending on their maturity, you may find yourself splitting the pod and scraping the soft flesh and seeds from inside rather than eating the exterior.
That may sound like work, but if you grew up eating these, you already know that this is part of the experience.
The flavour they release into the monggo is subtle but unmistakable, especially if it is something you haven’t tasted for years.
Finally, spinach goes in right at the end. It only needs a minute or two to wilt, bringing freshness and colour without becoming overcooked.
One of Those Dishes That Always Feels Like Home
Perhaps that is what makes ginisang monggo so enduring. It does not need one definitive recipe.
It changes depending on where you live, what is growing, what is available in the market and what happens to be sitting in the refrigerator. Pork today, tinapa next time. Malunggay when you can find it, spinach when you cannot.
This Ginisang Monggo with Bunga ng Malunggay follows exactly that philosophy.
It is richer than the simplest versions because of the pork jowl, intensely aromatic from all that garlic and ginger, creamy from mung beans that have almost melted into the broth, then filled with the earthy flavour of moringa pods and freshness from spinach.
For something built from such humble ingredients, it delivers an incredible amount of comfort. Serve it piping hot over rice and, Friday or not, it tastes exactly like the kind of Filipino food I will never get tired of eating.
Place the mung beans in a large pot and pour in 1 litres of water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the beans are very tender and beginning to break apart. Add more hot water if necessary.
While the beans cook, place the pork jowl in a heavy pan over medium heat. Cook slowly until its fat renders and the pork develops nicely browned edges. Remove the pork and set aside, leaving the rendered fat in the pan.
Add the onion and ginger and continue cooking until the onion softens.
Return the pork jowl to the pan, add the fish sauce and cook for another 2 minutes.
Transfer the pork and aromatic mixture into the cooked mung beans. Stir well and bring everything back to a gentle simmer. Cook for another 15 minutes so the flavours combine. Add hot water as necessary to maintain a thick but spoonable consistency.
Add the bunga ng malunggay and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the pods become tender.
Add the spinach and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes, just until wilted.
Season with freshly ground black pepper and adjust with additional salt or fish sauce if required.
Serve piping hot with plenty of steamed rice.
Notes
Pork jowl contains plenty of fat, so additional cooking oil may not be necessary. Rendering the pork slowly also gives you a flavourful base for frying the generous amount of garlic used in this recipe.
Choose younger bunga ng malunggay whenever possible. Mature pods can become quite fibrous. If the outer pod is too tough to eat, split it open while eating and scrape out the tender flesh and seeds inside.
Allow some of the mung beans to break apart naturally during cooking. This creates the thick, almost creamy broth that makes a good bowl of ginisang monggo so comforting.
Moringa won’t be available here and I am not sure I could substitute for a head of garlic — but it sounds really quite amazing.
This is completely new to me, Raymund, but it looks so hearty and delicious! I love discovering dishes and ingredients I’m not familiar with.