To many Hanoian generations, mung bean pudding has become a familiar dish which always presents on the ancestors’ altar at New Year’s Eve. Mung bean pudding is not a delicacy but a dessert, its ingredients contain a precious medicine for gastrointestinal diseases – the cardamom.
Cardamom is a highly aromatic spice that is most commonly planted in mountainous provinces of Viet Nam, its flavor is slightly sweet and hot, very suitable to combine with a wide range of other ingredients from poultry, vegetable to cake. And in the dish of mung bean pudding, the hot cardamom goes perfectly with the cool mung bean.
Unfortunately, this dish has lost its position in Vietnamese Tet’s meal, people can only see this dish at markets or at pagodas’ fast. Mung bean pudding is made from dried mung bean, sugar, grapefruit extract and cardamom following a secret portion that only skillful and experienced cookers know and that is the reason why ancient mothers always took this dish to test the ingenuity of their future daughter. Learn how to make Vietnamese mung bean pudding.