Taking Mung Ko Roti Abroad

I unfortunately have not been able to post once a month recently due to college applications and the workload of senior year. But I just submitted college applications and since I had some time on my hands, I wanted to spend it making another one of my grandmother’s recipes.

Over the summer, I recreated another childhood favorite with my grandmother - mung ko roti. These savory flat yellow pancakes are comfort food for me. Unlike pancakes though, people usually eat mung ko roti throughout the day. Any day. Then and now, whether as a light snack or a full meal, mung ko roti always seems to satiate my appetite. 

I remember vividly my grandmother, Maji, hunched over the silauto (a slab of stone used as a base), grinding soaked mung beans with a lohoro (a cylindrical stone used to grind)  of mung ko roti. My sister and I would dance around her, waiting for her to drop the batter on the pan and flip it out so we could grab them off the plate. Sometimes we would even nick them straight off the pan, even when they burned us to the touch. 

When I visited her over the summer, I knew I had to learn how to make my childhood favorites directly from the source. I observed Maji closely so I could mimic her movements with my own. We made a batch together, and it tasted heavenly -- just like my childhood. 

It never ceases to amaze me how well she remembers the ratios and process. Even with Alzheimer's starting to mess with her memories, she needs no recipe book to whip out my childhood favorites. 

Although I’m back in the US now, I wanted to try recreating her recipe in my home kitchen. Luckily, thanks to the recipe notes she had made for me when I was in Kathmandu, I was able to. 

Process

Mung ko roti literally translates to “flatbread of mung”. Mung beans are legumes common in South Asia. The small beans are used to make daal (with skin removed), in salads in sprouted form, and deep fried and eaten as snacks. In their non-sprouted state they are often even known as the “green gram” for their bright green color. 

In this recipe, the skin is peeled off the lentils, exposing their pale yellow core underneath. To take the skin off, my grandmother soaks the green mung beans in water for half a day, rubs them between her palms to dislodge the skin, and scoops out the skin that floats on top of the bowl. However, you can also buy the lentils with the skin already off them, which is what I did. I also threw in a handful of rice grains -- to give the mung-ko-roti some structure.

The mung is then ground into mush. Although this is traditionally done with a silauto and lohoro, I decided to use the wet grinder, an electric stone grinder that is made up of a stone base and two rotating stone wheels used to grind grains into a batter. The only reason we have a wet grinder at our house is that my mother takes it out once or twice a year to make the Sel, a doughnut made with rice flour, for the Nepali festivals of Dashain and Tihar. 

I added salt, turmeric powder, diced onions, and minced cilantro. The most important ingredient in the mung ko roti, according to my grandmother, is ginger paste.

I took an inch of ginger, took the skin off with the edge of the spoon as my grandmother had taught me to do, and finely grated the ginger using a Wasabi grater.

You also add water, until the ground-up mixture resembles pancake batter. 

Once you have the mung batter, the process is fairly simple. You place a healthy scoop of batter into an oiled pan and make sure that the batter has spread all around the bottom of the pan. I used the bottom of a flat spatula to spread the batter around. 

The roti needs to cook for a few minutes until the bottom turns golden or light brown. You cover the pan and let it cook untouched for a minute or two, then flip it over, allowing the mung ko roti to cook on both sides. After the roti has cooked on both sides, you can take it off the heat and plate it. 

Taste

My parents had already started nibbling on the rotis before I was finished! They reminded me of me and my sister a decade and a half ago in Kathmandu. But I couldn’t blame them. The aroma was inviting and they really were delicious. 

The first bite of the mung ko roti instantly transported me back to my grandmother’s home in Nepal. I was happy to carry on her memory, and make mung ko roti just as she had. 

We typically have mung ko roti with some type of achaar. This time, we had it with tamarind chutney.

I also made Kachumbar, a salad that resembles Greek salads. It's pretty easy to make, just a few diced vegetables – tomato, cucumber, onion, cilantro, and lemon juice –, but doesn’t fall short in taste.

It paired perfectly with the tasty mung ko roti and made it a complete meal.