The exotic, delicious, versatile Winged Bean

Most people have never heard of a "winged bean", or Psophocarpus tetragonolobus.  We have been eating it for years and have yet to hear either of those particular terms issue from anyone's mouth. We anxiously await the day that this vegetable is featured as the surprise ingredient for Iron Chef, so it will become more of a household word in English.

"Honey, go back to the store, you forgot the milk and winged beans!"

Palláng (Sigarilyas) fresh and ready for cooking.

We call this delectable vegetable "sigarilyas" in Filipino ("pallang" in Ilocano). We often cook this in the "ginisa" fashion, stir fried with ground pork, shrimp, patís (fish paste) and tomatoes. When you cut it up you will see a little star shape formed from the wings. People also put this in other Philippine vegetable dishes such as dinengdeng and pinakbet.

For a different twist from our Northern Luzon fare, we went to the Southen Visayan region for our recipe and cooked it with shrimp and coconut milk using the following ingredients.

1 cup coconut milk
1 cup shrimp, skinned but with heads left on
2 cups sigarilyas/winged beans
1 tsp shrimp paste (bagoong alamang)
2 cloves garlic
½ onion,
1 tsp fish paste (patis) - or to taste
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 hot chillis (siling labuyo) - optional, for the Bicolano palate

And here is the final delicious product:

Winged Bean in Coconut Milk / Ginataang Sigarilyas / Ginettaang a Pallang / Gin-gat-an nga Balagay

We welcome you to watch our video, shot in various exotic locations, including the restricted, private area for NASA's rocket launches in Cape Canaveral. Check out the video and cooking procedure here:

How to cook Winged Beans with shrimp and coconut milk

The video was filmed in English and Hiligaynon, the Visayan language spoken in Panay, Negros and parts of Mindanao. If you speak another language of Panay, e.g. Kinaray-a or Aklanon, please write us. We would love to invite you to be our consultant for another show.