295. Weekend Wokking Roundup - Recipes

This month's event rounds up a year's successful Weekend Wokking. Congratulations to Wandering Chopsticks, the brilliant food blogger from Southern California who created this monthly food blogging event. Also congratulations to the hosts and bloggers who have contributed wonderful recipes during the past year.

Each month, the host has the honour of choosing the secret ingredient and bloggers submit their recipes using it. It is always so interesting to see the creative approaches people take to cook. Marija, of Palachinka, chose Sprout as the secret ingredient for this month's Weekend Wokking.

Take a look at the different ways bloggers have cooked sprouts. I bet you'll learn something new. I did. I learned about moth beans and horse gram.

Thanks everyone for your wonderful recipes. This month's entries are a vegan's delight but carnivores will find tasty dishes too. Here they are:

Moth Beans (Vigna aconitifolia (Jacq.) Marechal)

Pavani, at the Cook's Hideout, made Sprouted Matki Pulao, Sprouted Moth Beans Pilaf. What a lovely vegan rice dish, it is a meal in itself.

Horse gram (Macrotyloma uniflorum, Fabaceae)

Sweatha, of Tasty Curry Leaf from Bangalore, combined pomegranates and almonds to make Fruity and Healthy Sprouts Salad. It is like looking inside a jewel box!

Black eyed peas

Yasmeen, of Health Nut, gives us a very healthy pasta salad - Black Eyed Peas Sprouts Pasta. She also tells us how to make to sprout the black eyed peas.

Soy beans

Sijeleng, of Javaholic, sends us a dish influenced by Xingiang and the silk road - she names it Silk Road Cumin Beef Sprouts.

Did you notice Sijeleng's stove? I think she is cooking outdoors on a propane fired burner. I intend to get the same type of setup ASAP. I am tired of cleaning the greasy kitchen after a session of stir frying and I'll be cooking outdoors this summer with my wok.

Korean soybean sprouts pancake, Kong Namul Jeon

TS and JS , the eating club Vancouver sisters, gave their creative take on Korean cooking combining namul and jeon to make namul jeon, sprouts pancakes. Brilliant as usual!

By the way, soy bean sprouts are one of the ingredients in Buddhist vegetarian chicken soup. The broth is so good that, close your eyes, you would think it was a meat broth.

Wheat

The lovely, spice girl, Zlamushka gives us a tutorial on how to make Sprouted Wheat Berries. This reminds of my school girl days and our science project of sprouting mung beans!

Mung bean sprouts, Vigna radiata

Mung bean sprouts are the most widely consumed sprouts on our planet. Here are some great recipes from different countries:

Mumbai, India

Simran, The Bombay Foodie, combines Usal, aka Mung bean sprouts, with grated coconut for a Maharashtrian dish. Sprouts and coconut sounds like a good combo and I look forward to trying this dish.

Philippines

Wandering Chopsticks, filled bean sprouts in spring roll wrappers for Filipino lumpia, aka spring rolls. I love spring rolls and these ones look scrumptious. Fried to perfection!

Korea

Korean bean sprout side dish, Sukju namul

Kits Chow serves Sukju namul, blanched bean sprouts with sesame garlic dressing. This is a healthy salad and very easy to make.

I am saving the best information about sprouts for the last:

SPROUTS HELP TO REVERSE & SLOW AGING!

If that isn't an incentive to eat more sprouts, I don't know what is.


Thanks to everyone who participated in Weekend Wokking and made my first hosting experience so enjoyable. My thanks to Wandering Chopsticks for inviting me to host Weekend Wokking #12.

I have hosting experience now and look forward to hosting Zlamushka's Tried and Tasted in June which features Meena's Hooked on Heat. This is a beautiful blog about simple, everyday Indian cooking. I hope everyone will try Meena's recipes and join T&T.

The host chooses a blog to be Tried and Tasted and I have nominated Wandering Chopsticks for the Blog of the Month.

Meyer lemon tree in the garden belonging to Wandering Chopsticks' uncle. Photograph courtesy of Wandering Chopsticks.

The secret ingredient for June's Weekend Wokking is one of my favourite ingredients, LEMON.

The lemon is unfairly maligned, for example, there is the saying: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And a defective car is called a lemon!

Then there is Peter, Paul and Mary's song Lemon tree:

Lemon tree very pretty,
And the lemon flower is sweet,
But the fruit of the poor lemon,
Is impossible to eat.

A beautiful song but not true. What about preserved lemons and candied lemons?

Remember lemons saved the English sailors from scruvy!

So dear Weekend Wokkers, let's prove them wrong. Send Wandering Chopsticks your recipes for lemon meringue pie, lemon chicken, tangines, lemon squares, granitas and all the lovely dishes you make using lemons.