Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent · A Deep in the Weeds Production

Abi Balingit (Cookbook Author and Dessert Remixer) - the dusky kitchen

·31 min·2 clips

Abby says she will never feel like she has seen it all in Filipino food.

1. Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent features Abby Balingit, cookbook author and dessert remixer, talking about Filipino American baking. 2. Dani Valent introduces Abby Balingit as the creator of The Dusky Kitchen and the author of Mayumu Filipino American Desserts Remixed, which won a James Beard Award. 3. The episode asks what Filipino American desserts can reveal about identity, migration, and creative inheritance. 4. Abby says she was born and raised in California, moved to New York in 2017, and turned to baking during quarantine in 2020. 5. She describes herself as self-taught, raised on Food Network, and drawn back to sweets while living with four roommates during the pandemic. 6. Abby explains that The Dusky Kitchen began with Asian American and Filipino American desserts and a cupcake recipe she posted on Twitter. 7. Her literary agent, Emmy, contacted her through Twitter and asked whether she wanted to write a cookbook. 8. Abby says she wrote the cookbook in 2022, released it in 2023, and spent the next two years promoting it. 9. She identifies bold sweet-and-savory combinations and high-vibrancy dessert colors as signatures of her work. 10. Dani asks about Abby’s childhood, and Abby says both parents came from Pampanga and kept a strongly Filipino home. 11. Abby mentions bagoong, patis, Hostess cupcakes, and Twinkies as part of the flavor mix she grew up with. 12. She says that mix of Filipino food and American junk food shapes the desserts she makes now. 13. Abby describes an adobo chocolate chip cookie she is making for Musings and Merienda and Baker’s Dozen at Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. 14. She names the cookie’s ingredients as soy sauce, brown butter, steeped bay leaves, and pink peppercorns. 15. Abby says the cookie is meant to be full-bodied and not overpoweringly sweet. 16. The conversation moves to Filipino food in the U.S. and Australia, including Kasama in Chicago and Filipino restaurants in California and Melbourne. 17. Abby says regional cooking varies widely, naming Mindanao coconut dishes and Bicol’s spicy coconut dishes as examples. 18. She says she wants to write another cookbook, but has not yet contracted or written it. 19. Dani’s style is warm and detailed, and Abby answers with personal stories, recipe breakdowns, and festival specifics. 20. Listeners who like Filipino food, baking, and diaspora cooking will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting a short, purely practical recipe segment may skip it.

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