Ginataang Bilo-Bilo is the periwinkle dessert soup for every climate menu
A Q&A with Abi Balingit, and a recipe from her cookbook Mayumu
A lil programming note before we get into today’s newsletter: You’ve been hearing from me weekly since I launched Pale Blue Tart last summer. I’m going to shift to publishing every other week for a while to make space for exciting projects I have in the works this spring (including in publications you’ll know — excited to share.) Which is also to say: This bud loves to freelance on food and climate topics, and is open for biz. And here’s to figuring out sustainability for ourselves, in all its forms.
Baking buds, hi! I’m excited to start sharing global vegan dessert recipes here and there from bakers I’m obsessed with. Because imagining a lower-carbon future for dessert involves more than veganizing eggy-creamy French and American classics, as delish as that work is (see: confetti cake for the climate era and plant-based key lime pie). It also involves baking from dessert cultures that have a way with coconut, tofu, agar-agar, and the billion other plant-based ingredients that are happiest, frankly, when they get to become dessert.
Published last year, Mayumu is Abi Balingit’s head-turning debut cookbook of Filipino-American desserts, remixed. Some are srsly remixy, like her towering Halo-Halo Baked Alaska topped with a generous coiff of meringue, and some are closer to traditional, like her plant-based ginataang bilo-bilo. The latter is the first treat in this miniseries and the first dessert soup I’ve made. I doubt I’ll ever make a prettier one. Those ube-tinted rice balls bobbing in the periwinkle wake!
Abi dropped by to talk plant-based Filipino desserts and to give us the skinnï on ginataang bilo-bilo. She’s also kindly sharing the recipe below so everyone can give it a whirl. Read on for a window into Filipino dessert history, and pointers on getting the textures of the tropical fruits in this soup just right. And stay tuned for the next global vegan dessert next month.
Q&A with Abi Balingit: Plant-based Filipino desserts and ginataang bilo-bilo
This Q&A has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Hi Abi! So, two things drew me to your recipe for ginataang bilo-bilo in Mayumu. One: The ube-tinted rice balls bobbing on the surface like perfect purple bouys. My god. Sign me up. Two: The recipe is plant-based! So give us some context before we get into the recipe. Are plant-based desserts common in the Philippines?
Yes, there are quite a few. So many things use coconut, like ginataang bilo-bilo does. And then there’s Turon: It uses saba banana (a starchier banana, kind of like a plantain) that is cut and put into spring roll wrappers. The recipe is just that, brown sugar, and a little bit of jackfruit. You roll those little spring rolls up and deep-fry them; and you fry them with sugar, so that when it cools it’s like crunchy caramel. It’s one of my favorite Filipino desserts. It’s very simple.
Yum. I ask because I’ve been thinking about how French baking has exported to a lot of the world the assumption that desserts must involve eggs and dairy… But there are other dessert ways! That use other ingredients! So I’ve gotten curious about desserts that are naturally vegan, rather than veganizations of something that started out eggy or creamy.
Yeah, and it’s fascinating: Because of colonization in the Philippines, there’s definitely the Spanish influence in the bread realm, and meringue desserts that come from that part of our history. It is nice to hold onto aspects that are indigenous to the Philippines. We’ve always had rice, we’ve always had coconut, we’ve always had palm sugar.
Indeed. I also thought about another ingredient, tofu, as I was reading through Mayumu. It’s used in the Taho Panna Cotta, which is next on my list to make because the way the panna cotta sits at a sharp diagonal is possibly the most dramatic dessert move I’ve ever seen. That recipe would be vegan but for the gelatin that holds it together. I was thinking you could sub agar agar — thoughts?
For sure. It’s fascinating because I feel like agar agar (or gulamen) is so common in Filipino dishes too because it exists in tropical environments. A lot of times, people use agar agar because it has a high melting point, so it’s able to set up and then stay set for longer than gelatin, especially when it’s hot and humid. There’s so many agar agar-based Filipino desserts.
So let’s talk ginataang bilo-bilo. You talk in the recipe headnote about how special it is to you. What makes it so special?
This recipe is so nostalgic for me, just because it is so connected to my mom. Growing up here in America, I’ve always had a sweet tooth, but it was so intense in my early years. Little Debbie’s and Hostess kind of things were the things I wanted at the grocery store. My mom was always like, ‘No, you can’t have that all the time,’ and so I begged my dad to get me cake and stuff she wouldn’t let me get.
But this dessert is something that I still appreciated. It wasn't too sweet when my mom would make it, but I still enjoyed it, even though I was kind of chaotic — I remember eating a full sugar cube sometimes. It's a very nourishing kind of dish to make. Thinking about all the things I ate as a kid, this feels much better, to be eating fruits and coconut milk, rather than like, a plate of Twinkies. And it can be really beautiful because there’s so much color in it inherently, but it’s so simple. I think that’s the best kind of dessert, where you don’t have to try that hard for it to be beautiful.
Totally. Is there anything you’d tell someone who’s making ginataang bilo-bilo for the first time to focus on in order to get it just right?
I think the hardest part about this recipe is just making sure you don't overcook the different fruits. So that's why the sweet potatoes are cooked first, because they take the longest to cook through.
The dramatic pops of purple floating in the soup make me want to serve it for dessert at a dinner party. And yet… it also kind of works as an afternoon snack since it’s not that sweet?? When and how do you serve it?
It's a great digestive after eating a big meal, like warming the belly before going to sleep. But at the same time, I would eat any leftovers in the morning — it’s almost like oatmeal or congee in that way. It’s just so hearty and satiating because it has so much texture in it and so much weight to it with the potatoes and rice balls and stuff.
Is the ube extract that colors the rice balls traditional?
When my mom makes it, she doesn't add ube extract, but I just really enjoy it for the flavor but also color. It permeates the rest of the dish as it goes, so it’s a light purple at the end of the day because it slowly bleeds throughout the soup. But I think it depends. Some people like a little bit of ube flavor in their bilo-bilo (which are just the round balls). It’s one of the small changes I made to that recipe that makes it my own, and differentiates it from my mom’s. But in terms of using ube, in an ideal world, I would have frozen chunks of ube that I could use in the dessert too. Sweet potatoes were the most common things I could get my hands on. Those kinds of swaps, in hindsight, like also using plantains instead of the traditional saba bananas, were definitely because of availability. They have the same type of flavor profile — not exactly what you’d get in the Philippines, but somewhat close.
On that note, I used small tapioca pearls instead of small sago. Did I miss out on anything by doing that?
No, not a crazy swap at all, as long as they’re small. And now that I think about it, other desserts in other cultures, like the mango sago that you’d get in Chinatown or something, typically uses little tiny balls of sago to give the mouthfeel of a soup, and because there are other components like mango chunks that act as the next layer of texture. I do think the goal is a balance of proportions and volumes.
So Abi, I gotta ask. With Mayumu turning one year old last month (congrats!), what’s next for you?
I want to do so much! I’m going to be on a food panel for New York Public Library soon. I hope to keep doing more recipe development, pop-ups, collaborations, and to also keep in mind that a second cookbook isn’t outside the realm of possibility. I also want to go back to baking more for fun!
Thanks so much, Abi!
Abi’s recipe for Mommy’s Ginataang Bilo-Bilo
Abi’s recipe headnote: Ever since I was little, I’ve called my mom “Mommy” and dad “Daddy.” I’m in my late twenties now, and I feel like I’ll call them that even when I’m in my late sixties. When I used to watch The Simpsons, my parents were aghast that Bart would call Homer by his first name. Honorifics and all other forms of showing respect are of the utmost importance in Filipino culture. It’s second nature to call all elders “Auntie” and “Uncle” because of my parents.
This recipe is for Mommy and a dessert that she loves. Ginataang bilo-bilo is a coconut soup chock-full of tropical fruits and chewy glutinous rice balls. As much as I enjoy riffing on classics, there weren’t elements in this ginataang bilo-bilo that I felt compelled to tweak. Besides swapping the traditional saba bananas for plantains, I believe it’s Mommy- approved.
Ingredients
Sago
1/2 cup small sago, uncooked
Bilo-Bilo
1/2 cup glutinous rice flour
1/4 teaspoon ube extract
Assembly
1 (13.5-ounce) can unsweetened, full- fat coconut milk
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 ounces peeled and 1/2- inch diced Japanese sweet potato
4 ounces peeled and 1/2- inch sliced ripe yellow plantain
1/2 cup drained and julienned canned yellow jackfruit
Directions
Sago
Pour 6 cups water into a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium- high heat.
Add the sago. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon and simmer until the balls are mostly clear with a white center, 13 to 15 minutes.
Turn off the heat and cover the saucepan with a lid. Let the sago sit undisturbed for 28 to 30 minutes, or until the tapioca balls are completely clear and translucent.
Using a large sieve, drain and rinse the sago. Place in a medium bowl. Pour 2 cups fresh water into the bowl for the sago to sit in while you make the soup.
Bilo-Bilo
Place the glutinous rice flour in a small bowl.
In a small measuring cup, whisk together 1/4 cup water and the ube extract. Add the mixture to the glutinous rice flour.
Mix the flour and ube water with your hands until it turns into a pliable dough, 4 to 5 minutes. Form teaspoon- size balls and place on a plate. You should end up with 20 balls. Set aside.
Assembly
In a medium saucepan, combine 1½ cups water, the coconut milk, sugar, and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, over medium- high heat until it reaches a boil, 6 to 7 minutes.
Add the sweet potato and reduce the heat to medium- low. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the rice balls and plantain slices. Cook, stirring frequently, until the rice balls are fully cooked, another 3 to 5 minutes. The balls should float to the surface when they are done.
Drain the water from your bowl of sago and add the sago to the soup. Stir in the jackfruit and let it simmer until the fruit is all cooked, another 2 to 4 minutes. The sweet potato pieces should be fork- tender. Serve warm. Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. You can reheat a small bowl’s worth of bilo- bilo in a microwave for 1 to 2 minutes, or until it’s hot enough for your liking.