99 Ranch But a Bao Ain’t One
For Asian Americans who grew up first-gen, it’s not unusual to have Southern barbecue on the table next to scallion pancakes or to snack on Yan Yans alongside Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Influenced by that dichotomy of cultures, Abi Balingit and Frankie Gaw create wildly innovative takes on what food can mean, when your family’s flavors become your own.
Photos by Jennelle Fong
Prop styling by Samantha Margherita
Special thanks to 99 Ranch Market and the Pollack Group
Halo-halo baked Alaska, strawberry shortcake sapin-sapin, ube macapuno molten lava cake—the recipes in Abi Balingit’s repertoire are a sweet tooth’s fever dream, packing Filipino flavors into traditional American desserts and vice versa. Her book, Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed, is as much an exploration of her cultural identity and the heritage that shaped her as it is the flavors she grew up loving and eating. Frankie Gaw’s First Generation: Recipes From My Taiwanese-American Home does something similar, so that culinary crossovers like lap cheong corn dogs and Cincinnati chili with hand-pulled noodles make perfect sense. Here, the two home cooks talk canned-food breakfasts, third-culture pantries, and making space for the in-between.
Frankie So, where are you based?
Abi I’m in Brooklyn. You’re on the West Coast, right?
Frankie Yes, in Seattle. I’m originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. I went to college in Pittsburgh for design, then I was in San Francisco for seven or eight years, and I moved to Seattle three years ago, right in the pandemic. Do you live in Crown Heights?
Abi I actually live in Bed-Stuy. I’m originally from California. I lived in San Jose, moved to Stockton when I was 6, and then I went to UC Berkeley, graduated 2017, and moved to New York right after. Do you still feel connected to the Midwest?
Frankie It’s weird, sometimes I feel more American, and other times I feel more Asian.
But innately I do feel very Midwest still. A lot of my values came from living in the Midwest, just hanging out with my friends’ families and growing up in the suburbs. I think that shaped a lot of who I am today, both in terms of how I go about the world and my cooking.
A lot of my formative years were based in this very Midwestern upbringing, of trying to fit in with everyone else, where I was the only Asian kid. Because my parents were immigrants, our pantry was a mix of things they grew up with that they would get at the 99 Ranch, and then the things that I would want—all the processed American foods like Cheetos, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Gushers. It was very much a visual representation of the generational gap between me and my parents. Also, my grandma would live with us four months out of the year when I was a kid, so she would stock our pantry with so many dried mushrooms. I’d be trying to get my cereal, and I’d just see boxes of dried mushrooms.
I was like, What are you dealing here? [laughs]
It seems like you had a really strong connection to your Filipino heritage, even as a kid.
Abi Yeah, I felt connected to a lot of Filipinos growing up, just because it was a built-in community of people—my parents’ friends’ kids and then people at school. It was definitely easier to come to terms with, Oh, yes, I am Filipino first before I think of myself as American. But it is a push and pull. With my parents, there was more generational tension in life things. I remember when I was going to college, they were like, “Do you want to be a nurse? Do you want to be an accountant?” I was like, No. I still don’t necessarily fit all the boxes they would have wanted, but I just had to accept that. Moving away helped, and being able to be my own person outside of family has been so important to me. Do you feel the same way about moving away?
Frankie I always knew I wanted to leave because I felt different, but it was never like I wanted to leave my family. When we immigrated, my family didn’t move to a single location; everyone dispersed. My friends would have generations—their grandma would be down the street, their aunt would be over there. And I always kind of envied that, like, Oh, it’s so nice that they have these big giant family dinners. I’m an only child, so I only lived with my mom and dad and a wiener dog. It was this feeling like there’s something more out there. I also loved watching MTV, so I would watch Laguna Beach and Gossip Girl and be like, Oh wow, there’s so much out in the world. And that, for some reason, shaped my perspective of what I wanted my future to be like—I’m going to go out to the big city, and I’m going to become somebody.
Abi Do you find yourself craving specific dishes or foods when you’re missing your family?
Frankie Yeah, totally. I crave very traditional Taiwanese food that my grandma would make for me—steamed buns with pork and cabbage. But then I also crave junk food, like McDonald’s. Whenever I’m exhausted, I just Uber Eats McDonald’s, or a Chipotle bowl [laughs]. That to me is just as comforting, weirdly enough. Do you have any sentimental, nostalgic dishes?
Abi Yeah, I think about all the canned food we would eat. I don’t know if you ever ate canned corned beef as a kid. I don’t know why this is a Filipino thing—I mean, American occupation and all that. But it was a breakfast thing to have sauteed corn beef with onions and tomatoes over rice. And then we’d have Spam with fried rice, and insert whatever side of egg you want—fried egg most of the time. I always reach for dishes that are “easy” Filipino cooking. A lot of people think Filipino food is like kare-kare, these stews that take so long. That’s what you get at a party. People think it’s everyday food and it’s not, really. American-wise, I love Hot Cheeto puffs. I’ll dip them in cream cheese.
Frankie Oh my God, I have to try that. One of the things I really admire about your sweets is that you are not afraid to incorporate savory pantry items into your desserts. Do you have a favorite?
Abi Yeah, it’s funny, I just mentioned kare-kare—it’s a peanut butter oxtail stew with annatto seeds and fermented shrimp paste, bagoóng. I have a cookie recipe that is kare-kare embodied—a peanut butter cookie with a fermented shrimp paste caramel on top. It has the flavors of everything I love about eating that dish without having to make an eight-hour stew. Do you have a dish that embodies savory and sweet?
Frankie Yeah, I do a Cap’n Crunch miso shortbread. I love Cap’n Crunch, but it’s very sweet, so bringing umami into the mix is a nice balance. I grind up some Cap’n Crunch, mix that with flour, and add pecans and miso into the batter. Then I roll the shortbread in demerara sugar and Cap’n Crunch. They’re these very salty, sweet, kind of nostalgic cookies.
Makes 36 cookies
Abi’s Kare-Kare Cookies
Creamy peanut butter flavors these chewy, thick cookies. The dough is rolled in an annatto-sugar mixture before baking to give them a burnt-orange color. The centers of these cookies are filled with spicy bagoóng caramels, which get slightly melted in the oven, so you get a taste of sweet, shrimpy goodness with every bite.
Ingredients
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. kosher salt
¼ cup granulated sugar
2 tsp. annatto powder
36 Spicy Bagoóng Caramels (see recipe below)
Instructions
Position an oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with silicone mats and set aside.
Place the butter, peanut butter, and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
Mix in the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla until the mixture is well combined. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt until well combined.
Adjust the mixer to the lowest speed and gradually stir in the flour mixture until it forms a dough and there are little to no flour streaks.
In a small bowl, mix together the granulated sugar and annatto powder.
Using a 1-tablespoon cookie scoop, portion the dough into 18 balls and roll them twice in the sugar mixture. Place the dough balls on one of the prepared baking sheets, making sure to leave at least 1 ½ inches of space between the balls.
Bake for 6 minutes. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and insert a spicy bagoóng caramel in the center of each cookie. Immediately return the sheet to the oven and bake for an additional 3-4 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown. Before taking the cookies out of the oven, drop the sheet against the oven rack a couple times at a height of about 4-5 inches to create outer ripples in the cookies. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack to cool completely.
Repeat the process with the remaining cookie dough and the other lined baking sheet until all the dough is baked. Store any leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
Recipe excerpted from Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed by Abi Balingit. Copyright © 2023 by Abigail Balingit. Reprinted by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Abi Can we do a cookie swap?
Frankie Yeah! That’d be amazing. Do you find that you incorporate Filipino pantry items and ingredients into American desserts? Or more American ingredients into Filipino forms?
Abi Both. Because I grew up in the States, I know cakes and cookies and Western desserts very well, so it’s easier for me to translate Filipino flavors that way. Sometimes I end up doing the reverse, but there are some things I just don’t know how to do. We’d have steamed rice cakes, kakanin, and my parents would just buy from the store, because they’re so time-consuming to make. There are so many things that I have to demystify in terms of Filipino cooking and desserts, because I take it for granted that you can go to a store or bakery and get these things.
Frankie What is your relationship like with the Philippines? Do you feel connected to Filipino culture?
Abi Growing up, I only got to go twice to the Philippines. It’s just so far, it’s so much money. When I think about my immediate family, I think of my mom’s extended family who was also in the Bay Area with us. My dad’s family is more dispersed around the world, and a lot of them still live in the Philippines. So it’s a global identity. I love the Philippines. I wish I could be there more, but I’ve established a whole life here, too. I think there is a conflict; for me, at least. I am Filipino American in the sense that I definitely still care about what is happening in the Philippines, but there are certain ways that I don’t completely fit in there—people can tell a mile away. How do you feel?
Frankie My initial relationship with Taiwan stems from my parents’ relationship to Taiwan. I only went back maybe once in my childhood, and I think that was because my parents, when they came to the States, they came with the mentality like, We are going to completely conform to American culture. They weren’t erasing their Taiwanese heritage, but they were definitely doing all they could to be as white as possible, basically. We didn’t talk about Taiwanese food or culture that much. I only got that through visiting my grandparents on holidays. They were the portal to being able to connect my identity on paper with my actual heritage. A lot of that was through food and the things they would cook. When I was on my book tour, I would feel this imposter syndrome because I just wrote this book, it’s Taiwanese American, but I still feel very uncomfortable claiming that I’m an expert. The whole reason I wrote the book in the first place was to basically say that it’s okay to be in-between and not feel like you fit completely into your Taiwanese or Filipino or whatever heritage that you’ve grown up with. Especially as first-, second-generation kids who have grown up in a different environment from their families. It’s a complex relationship, but I’m still very proud of it and happy to be Taiwanese.
Abi I feel that so much—the expectation that you have to be an expert because you wrote a book about the subject. Of course, you have to be knowledgeable, but I’m pretty sure someone in the Philippines can say more about the native produce and plants there. But it’s like, Okay, yes, I am Filipino enough. And I think about this a lot, too, of presenting Filipino and what does that mean? It’s difficult for me when people say, “Oh, you’re whitewashing our own food.” And it’s like, But I’m not white. I am American. I think that’s what they mean. But I hope the reverse is that people see that I’m just taking it in one direction and there are so many paths you can take your own food and your own culture.
Makes 96 caramels
Spicy Bagoóng Caramels
Recipe excerpted from Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed by Abi Balingit. Copyright © 2023 by Abigail Balingit. Reprinted by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Ingredients
Nonstick spray
½ cup heavy cream
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
¾ cup packed dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp. light corn syrup
1 Tbsp. spicy sauteed bagoóng (go for the sauteed shrimp variety labeled as ginisang bagoóng alamang or salted shrimp fry, not bagoóng isda, which is made from fermented fish)
Instructions
Using nonstick spray, grease a silicone mold that has at least 96 square cavities. Each square should hold 2 milliliters’ worth of caramel.
Place the cream, butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, 2 tablespoons of water, and the bagoóng in a medium saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently with a rubber spatula, until the mixture reaches a boil, 3-4 minutes.
Clip a candy thermometer to the saucepan. Continue stirring until the mixture reaches 240°-245°F. This can take 8-10 minutes.
Remove the pan from the heat and remove the candy thermometer.
Pour the caramel into the prepared molds, using the rubber spatula to evenly spread the mixture. Let the caramel squares cool to room temperature.
Cover the mold with a sheet of parchment paper and chill in the fridge overnight before wrapping each caramel in a square of wax or parchment paper. Store the caramels in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 month.
Frankie It’s really cool to see people like you and all these other Asian Americans really embracing this in-betweenness that we kind of exist in and how that shows up through food—dishes that blur the lines of Asian and American. I think it shows that it is a valid identity in itself, and that food is valid too.
Abi Putting aside Taiwanese and Filipino things, you’ve lived so many places. Where do you lean in terms of American regional influences?
Frankie A lot of my Asian American cooking definitely leans Midwest, like comfort food—chilis, corn, mac and cheese. My grandma on my dad’s side immigrated to Memphis, Tennessee, from Taiwan, so I have a lot of nostalgia for Southern barbecue too. On Thanksgiving we would have very traditional scallion pancakes and steamed buns and dumplings, but then we’d also have beef brisket and baby back ribs and green bean casserole. It’s such a core memory for me. The West Coast has informed my cooking in subtle ways, I feel like I never had a good vegetable until I lived in San Francisco.
Abi That is so real. The Chez Panisse effect of farm-to-table is so Californian.
Frankie Where does your American regional situation fit into your cooking?
Abi Growing up in California, there’s such a big Latinx community—Mexican food, specifically. And the most mind-boggling thing for me in moving to New York is, the grocery stores are just completely different. There’s so much more Puerto Rican and Cuban and Dominican kinds of items. And that’s the thing: You just cannot homogenize anyone’s food and culture. It makes me think of the ways that I was introduced to things from [other parts of America] like red velvet cake—I remember getting it at California Pizza Kitchen. I think it’s just having an open mind about the people [you meet] or stories you hear. Even specific to you in Ohio, I made a Buckeye recipe with a Filipino traditional egg custard. I have a fascination with food that is so American. I’m like, What are casseroles like? I want to know. But the nice thing about living where I was in California was the globalness of it. That’s such a lucky luxury.
Frankie I think that’s so special that that’s your version of regional American influence, the fact that in California you have access to so many different cultures. That’s just as American as the canned corn and green beans I grew up with.
Makes 20 cookies
Frankie’s Cap’n Crunch And Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Recipe excerpted from First Generation: Recipes from my Taiwanese-American Home by Frankie Gaw. Reprinted by permission of Ten Speed Press.
Ingredients
3 ½ cups Cap’n Crunch cereal
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. white miso
1 cup chopped pecans
½ cup demerara sugar
Flaky salt
Instructions
In a food processor, finely grind 2 cups of Cap’n Crunch; you should end up with 3 cups ground cereal. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the ground cereal with the flour. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and miso. Using a hand mixer or the paddle attachment of the stand mixer, beat the mixture on medium-high speed until it’s smooth and fluffy, around 3 minutes or so.
With the mixer on low speed, slowly incorporate the Cap’n Crunch–flour mixture until combined. Add 1 cup Cap’n Crunch and the chopped pecans, and mix on low speed until incorporated.
Remove the dough from the mixing bowl and divide it in half. Place one half on a large piece of plastic wrap. Fold the plastic wrap over the dough and roll into a log approximately 2-2 ½ inches in diameter. Repeat with the other dough half, and then place both halves in the fridge and chill for 1-2 hours, until completely firm.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. In a small mixing bowl, crush the remaining ½ cup Cap’n Crunch into small pieces. Add the demerara sugar to the bowl and mix to combine. Transfer the mixture to a large plate. Remove the dough from the fridge, unwrap, and brush with water. Roll each log in the Cap’n Crunch–sugar mixture to create a crust. Slice each log into 1-inch disks and place the disks onto the baking sheets 1 inch apart.
Sprinkle with flaky salt and bake for 16 minutes, until cooked through and the edges have browned, swapping the baking sheets at the halfway point so the cookies bake evenly. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely, then serve.
