‘Our love language is through food’: Filipino bakers in Hong Kong cook up a taste of home to satisfy their cravings
- Missing the flavours of home, some Filipinos in Hong Kong are creating their own bakery brands to bring familiar comforts to the community
- Bakeries like Purple Flour, run by a former lawyer in the Philippines, are selling popular items like ube cheese pandesal and ube chiffon cakes
A sense of longing would wash over Esther Claudine Lim Singzon, stuck in Hong Kong during the coronaviruas pandemic, every time she saw ube cheese pandesal on her Instagram feed.
Pandesal, or “salt bread” rolls, are staples in a Filipino family’s almusal (breakfast) or merienda (snack time). Contrary to its name, the soft, fluffy breads are mildly sweet with a crisp exterior. They are available in panaderias, or local bakeries, across The Philippines.
Ube, a purple yam grown in the Philippines, has been integral to the nation’s food culture for over 400 years. Ube halaya jam adds a nutty, vanilla flavour to almost any dessert. To make it, purple yams are boiled, mashed and stirred with sugar, butter and coconut milk.
“I’m obsessed with ube,” says Singzon, whose long search for it in Hong Kong has almost always left her disappointed. The flavour of what jams she could find in World-Wide House – the city’s hub for Filipino products, in Central on Hong Kong Island – was “never right”.
Finally, she decided to make her own ube halaya concoction.
