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The Sacred & Delicious Food List is an addendum to the cookbook, Sacred & Delicious. Author Lisa Mitchell decided to distribute this comprehensive list of the foods through her website so that she would be able to update it more easily. These are foods found in most modern kitchens. The list organizes the foods into categories to reflect how they fit in your diet from an Ayurvedic perspective.


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Blending Cultures for the Jewish New Year!

Today I offer you a must-try recipe for Sweet Mung Pancakes with Stewed Apples. This dish blends ideas from the two cultures I know best: Eastern European Jewish traditions and the Vedic culture of India. How I came to embrace Vedic culture as a Jewish girl from the American south may well be the topic of a book one day, but for now, let’s focus on making something both delicious and healthy for the Jewish New Year!

As Jewish people throughout the world began celebrating Rosh Hashanah and the year 5780 at sundown on September 29th, we invoked the blessing of sweetness for the coming year by eating slices of raw apple dipped in honey. Many families will continue serving apples throughout this holy season, which culminates ten days later on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  In India—and wherever people with Indian roots have formed communities—the mung bean is recognized as one of the most important foods to grace their tables.

The traditions of these two disparate and widely dispersed cultures come together in this one dish! I first tasted a version of these pancakes at the restaurant in Vaidya Smita Naram’s Ayushakti Panchakarma Clinic outside Mumbai. Unlike American-style pancake batters (which are made with flour, baking powder, and eggs), these pancakes are made with a thin vegan batter that is poured like a dosa. If this technique is new to you, check out this video. It’s easy and fun to do!

Why Mung Beans?

 Anyone who has followed the Sacred & Delicious blog for some time may have deduced that one of my goals is to inspire American cooks to embrace mung beans for their many health benefits:

  • When properly cooked, mung beans are the easiest legumes to digest.
  • Mung beans are the ideal vegan protein and they’re also a good source of B vitamins, especially folate.
  • Mung—again, properly cooked—is naturally detoxifying for the colon, liver, kidneys, and lymph system.

For all these reasons, I’m always seeking out diverse and delicious ways to eat them!

An Important Note about Honey

 Let me use this recipe to make an important point about honey, which I call for in the ingredients. Raw, unfiltered honey is a delicious natural sweetener, and Ayurveda suggests that it is the best sweetener for people with kapha conditions. If you tend to develop sinus congestion or have a cough, for you raw honey is medicine!

However, Ayurveda cautions us to avoid cooking with honey! Yes, you’ll find an argument about this online, but Ayurveda has long held that eating cooked honey will cause toxins to form in the gut. It drives me a little batty to see all the packaged baked goods in grocery and gourmet stores marketed as a health food because they’re “baked with honey!”

In this dish, the honey goes on top of the pancakes. In this way it becomes only a little warm—which is OK.

Shana Tova! Happy New Year!

 As Jewish communities enter these days of awe and reflection between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are reminded that we are the ones responsible for creating sweetness in life through our actions, words, and deeds. We are invited to forgive others for their imperfections—and to forgive ourselves as well. To me, this is the sweetest part of celebrating the Jewish New Year. As we eat our apples and honey this week, let it be a prayer and an offering of love to one another.

L’shanah tovah tikatevu. “May you be inscribed and sealed [in the Book of Life] for a good year.”

Print

SWEET MUNG PANCAKES WITH STEWED APPLES

Preparation Time: 40 minutes, plus time to soak beans and grill pancakes 
Makes 16 large pancakes

For the batter:
2 cups whole mung beans
3 cups water or fresh almond milk
1 teaspoon mineral salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon coconut sugar

For the apple filling:
4 apples (I like Fuji or MacIntosh, but any will do)
½ cup water
2 tablespoons ghee or coconut oil
½ teaspoon mineral salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 to 2 teaspoons coconut sugar

For the griddle and serving:
Ghee or coconut oil
½ cup of honey, approximately

Time-Saver: Use ⅛ cup of batter so you can fit 3 or 4 pancakes to a square griddle pan, rather than making 1 large pancake at a time. Then top the pancakes with honey and apples instead of rolling them. Use 2 or 3 griddle pans, if you have them!

1. Soak the mung beans for 6 to 8 hours. When ready to cook, rinse them several times. Put the strained beans and 6 cups of water in a pot, bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to medium. Cook them covered for 45 minutes on a stovetop or until the beans are fork tender. You can also cook them on high in a pressure cooker or in an Instant Pot, and follow those directions for cooking beans. Strain the cooked mung beans—there should be about 2 cups. Add half of the beans to a blender with all the other batter ingredients. Blend on high until smooth. Add the additional beans, and blend again until smooth. Set aside.

2. Core and seed the apples, and chop them into half-inch squares. Bring a saucepan with the water and apples to a gentle boil. Then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes, until the apples are tender. Strain the apples and throw away the water. Place the saucepan back on medium-low heat. Add the ghee or oil to the pan along with the cooked apples and the rest of the ingredients for the filling. Toss gently to coat the apples.

3. While the apples are cooking, heat a non-stick griddle or pan on medium heat. When the pan is hot, grease it with on teaspoon of ghee or oil. If available, use a round serving spoon to pour about ⅛ cup and up to ½-cup of batter per pancake with a gentle swirling action (4 small pancakes to 1 square griddle pan or one large pancake per pan). Then use the flat side of the spoon to spread and smooth the batter by making small clockwise circles from the center of the pancake until it is thin and rounded. The edges can be a little thinner than the center, giving you a soft center that’s easy to roll with crispy edges. Cook for 5 minutes on the first side; then flip and brown the other side for 4 to 5 minutes so that the batter is cooked through. As the pan gets hotter, reduce the heat to avoid burning. Subsequent pancakes will cook in about 3 minutes on each side.

4. Assemble each pancake by placing a tablespoon of cooked apples close to the edge. Roll the pancake and serve with honey on top. Or serve the pancakes flat, top with apples and drizzle with honey.

Add 1 tablespoon of freshly grated ginger to the batter if you have weak digestion.

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