heart-shaped beans

A long time ago, I bought a bag of dried mung beans. I'm not sure what drew me in. It may have been that they were a a cute oval shape, a nice pea green color, or more likely, they were cheap! Since then, I've made sprouts, but that only used up so much of the bag.

A couple of weekends ago, I decided that I would use up the rest of the beans and make yokan. I think azuki beans, not mung beans, are standard for this recipe, but I didn't have an azuki beans, so that was the end of that dilemma.

It seemed like this would be a pretty straightforward recipe, and I would combine these two recipes, first to make the an(ko?) and then to make the yokan. I used some approximation of these recipes... I'm not sure exactly what I did because my printer is out of ink and instead of writing things down, I will run back and forth from the computer to the kitchen between steps. I think I had some difficulties because most recipes talk about ounces of agar or portions of a stick of kanten. I had agar-agar flakes and measuring spoons and don't really remember where I found the conversion. I also used a strainer that is falling apart, so I got kind of lazy and don't think I ended up with that much anko. Oh well. Yokan is usually rectangular, but I didn't have any molds or tupperwares that were empty and the right size, so I poured the mix into my very corny heart-shaped ice cube trays and they popped right out. Heart shaped yokan!! Sweet and beany.