Waxing nostalgia: How to make Lelut Balatong with red monggo beans

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MANILA, Philippines — You have always had green mongo beans for your Ginisang Munggo and Ginataang Munggo. Now, Chef Waya Araos-Wijangco, owner and chef of Gypsy Baguio by Chef Waya, is telling you that you can make your mongo soup unique and exciting by using red monggo beans.

These red beans are not always available in the market — at least not as easy to source as the green ones — so when you chance upon them in the market, purchase some and try to make the most out of them.

As for Chef Waya, she recently shared that her husband had a hankering for Ginataang Munggo, and so they went to the market to get ingredients for it.

She waxed nostalgic while cooking it, saying, “This was how our Baguio summer vacation afternoons used to taste like.”

The chef decided to share the recipe, which she calls “intuitive, unbothered by precision.”

Lelut Balatong

Ingredients:

1/2 kg. malagkit (glutinous rice)

1/4 kg. red monggo beans, toasted and lightly pounded

1 cup brown sugar

Gata (coconut milk) from 3 pcs. coconuts

1 liter water

Juice from a 2-inch knob of ginger

1/2 tsp. salt

Procedure:

1. Toast the red monggo beans until fragrant then pound to crack them open.

2. Place everything in a pot. Let it come together slowly, stirring as needed, until the rice blooms and the beans soften into the coconut milk.

3. Cook it low and patient. Stir like you mean it. Taste as you go. Adjust sugar depending on the mood, the weather, the memory you are chasing.

4. Some like it looser, almost drinkable. Others wait until it thickens into something you can almost slice. Either way, it lands the same — warm, grounding, and comfortingly familiar.

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