Spring Garden Mung Bean Salad

My garden is full of overproducing greens.

The tatsoi has bolted.

After pulling most of the butter lettuce, pulling outer leaves from the red lettuce and speckled romaine daily, freezing all of the remaining spinach, as well as the outer leaves of the mustard, kale & tatsoi, and tossing the brussel sprout plants that grew like crazy but never budded up, I still have an egregious amount of fresh greens to preserve or use before it gets too hot and they die.

Tonight, I looked in the pantry and realized I had some dried mung beans, which as they tend to be on the starchier side for pulses, I decided they would be a good base for a salad made of stuff we had in the garden and in the kitchen.  It was delicious.

The finished product (although E & I both added grated romano on top)

Serves 2:

1/3 lb dried mung beans (I boiled the whole pound, and just refrigerated the remainder of the beans for later use in the week)
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 large shallot, minced
5 large kale leaves, destemmed (save & chop the stems), with kale sliced into 1/2 cm ribbons perpendicular to the stems
1 gigantic stalk of celery from the garden (likely 2 or 3 grocery store stems), chopped
1 tomato, chopped
salt
black pepper
dried ground cumin
3 T butter
2 T lemon juice

1. Cover mung beans with 2X volume of water, add a dash of salt.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer and cover.  Cook for 20 minutes and immediately remove from heat, rinse in cold water, and drain. Re-rinse with more cold water if they are still steaming to stop them from overcooking.

2. Place butter, 1/2 minced garlic, 1/2 minced shallot, chopped kale stems and celery into a pan (I re-used the mung bean cooking pot).  Heat to medium and sautee until celery and stems start to soften.  Turn off heat and add salt, black pepper, and lemon juice to taste and stir while cooling.

3. In a mixing bowl, place cooled mung beans, chopped kale, tomatoes, the other half of the minced garlic and shallots.

4. Mix the hot butter/kale/celery/garlic/shallot dressing into the mixing bowl and toss.  Add cumin to taste and adjust salt/pepper accordingly.

5. Serve in bowls with forks.  Feel free to grate a dried hard cheese over the top for more fat and protein.

Enjoy!