Ginataang

I first tried ginataang at Footscray Market, at Lutong Pinoy in the food court.  

It is a sweet Filipino dish,  a coconut soup.  I loved it.  It is sweet and liquidy with coconut milk, cubes of starchy vegetables, tapioca pearls, fruit and softy pillowy dumplings made of glutinous rice.  The purple yam really stood out in the dish and I was curious to find out more.  I'd been scouting around the internet and found a recipe at Busog Sarap.  This seems the closest to what I ate at Footscray.  The recipe called for yams.  I wasn't so sure what a yam was, so I started more searching on the net and find out about yams, sweet potatoes and taro.  


In the ginataang recipe at Busog Sarap, she uses purple yam (ube) taro (gabi) and sweet potato (kamote).    I found all my vegetables at Little Saigon Market.  I didn't use the orange sweet potato.  I also found a place that stocks frozen ube as it is not available fresh all year round.

Top Left, purple yam (ube), Top Right, purple or Okinawa sweet potato
Bottom Left: taro (gabi), Bottom Right...a yam? of some sort

Top Left, purple yam (ube), Top Right, purple or Okinawa sweet potato
Bottom Left: taro (gabi), Bottom Right...a yam? of some sort

close up of the purple yam (ube)

Ube is not available fresh all year round, I found some frozen yam (ube) at an Asian grocer at Footscray Market,
the shop faces Footscray Station carpark, 

Tapioca pearls

 

glutinous rice flour dumplings, getting these into a neat round shape
might take a bit of practice I think!!

Tastes a bit like a cross between papaya and  lychee, and is a firmish fruit.
Quite nice tasting, given it is canned fruit.

I found the recipe reasonably easy to follow.  Next time I make it, I would halve the amount of glutinous rice dumplings, at least double the tapioca pearls (and maybe use some large ones too, which Lutong Pinoy did), and probably increase the jackfruit too.  That of course if just to suit my taste and close to what I ate at Footscray.   The dish is similar in some ways to che chuoi chung, a Vietnamese dish I made last year.   Both of which contain my favourite dessert ingredients of coconut milk, tapioca pearls and banana.  This was a perfect brunch dish for a cold winter morning.  

Ginataang

I'm sending this over to Weekend Herb Blogging.  Yasmeen at Health Nut is hosting WHB #287, here is her recap of the event.