Yam Tua Pluu / Thai Sigadilyas Salad

A big thank you to Adam, a Marketmanila reader and commenter, who in a recent post on Thai food, asked if I had tried a thai style “wing-bean salad” and this reminded me of several versions of sigadilyas salad that I have been MEANING to try for the past few years… I just never got around to it and suddenly everything seemed to line up and point towards a sigadilyas experiment… to stunning results! I was at the markets this morning and noticed some really fresh looking burgundy colored sigadilyas or winged beans…

I bought the burgundy ones for say PHP30 for a small bunch, and a few stalls later, spotted some incredibly fresh looking light green sigadilyas, and got those for just PHP15 for a small bunch. I thought the two colors would add visual interest to a salad. I have written about sigarilyas before, here, in case you were curious…

Back at home, I searched out David Thompson’s tome on Thai food and located the recipe I had glanced at several times in the past, but never got around to trying. A very simple thai style salad for which I was missing several ingredients, so I decided to somewhat wing it with the winged beans instead… :) The beans I got were incredibly fresh, so the tips of the “wings” were nice, but otherwise they tend to blacken and Mr. Thompson suggest trimming them if that is the case. I sliced the sigadilyas into roughly 1/8th inch slices then quickly blanched them in boiling water (maybe 45 seconds or so) and shocked them in ice water to stop the cooking and help the beans retain their vibrant color. I stuck them in a salad spinner to remove excess moisture, then place them in a bowl and tossed them along with some shredded chicken (leftovers) which was in lieu of the suggested sliced pork and shrimp, and some homemade shredded and toasted coconut. Next, I made a dressing with lots of dayap juice, patis, a little sambal (chili paste) and palm or dark brown sugar. Dress your salad and toss gently…

…then add a couple of tablespoons of coconut cream and toss before serving. This was SUPERB. The texture, flavor and color was a surprisingly easy to make but delicious salad. Perfect with fried dishes, or if you had enough meat in it, a meal all by itself! The blending of coconut cream with the dayap or lime was really refreshing… and the still slightly crunchy texture of the winged beans made this extremely appealing. And a bonus? It costs very little to make, perhaps PHP60-80 for the portion in the photo up top, and it easily fed three people. I made another batch for the crew, that I have to admit, despite the stuff we cook in our kitchens, are less adventurous than I am, and they wiped out their entire salad in no time at all… :)

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33 Responses

  1. Saw you in the market this morning, and I saw these sigarilyas too. Lovely recipe for vege-heads like me. This should be good with brined shrimps too, no?

  2. Are they called sigadilyas or sigarilyas? Not that it matters but I am amazed that sigarilyas can be prepared that way. I’ve had it in sinigang and sinigang only! I am fond of sigarilyas so this is a must try! Thanks MM (and Adam!).

  3. I’ve never imagined it on a salad. It didn’t occur to me until now that sigarilyas and haricot verts belong to the same Family (Fabaceae, legume family). Thanks MM.

    @MP: both are correct and depends on which Tagalog dialect. /r/ and /d/ are interchangeable and were once allophones. It’s even represented by the same Baybayin script. It’s quite interesting, for example the Morong/Teresa, Rizal Tagalog dialect usually prefers /r/ over /d/ so that “sandok sa dingdíng” would be transformed into “sanrok sa ringríng”.

    :)

  4. I grew this about 5 years ago…called Asparagus Peas over here….it is a real pain getting them to germinate. It took forever but I managed to harvest a loooooooot eventually. I hope I can get the burgundy seeds for next year and I know now to start them much earlier than I did before just like eggplants.

    Gej…do you have seeds?…or you know where I can get them (burgundy and green as well) over there? My nephew is going there in January and I know that the seeds about half the size of regular peas.

  5. Oh, interesting. I couldn’t imagine them in salads before this. I’ve always liked ginataang sigarilyas with bagoong.

  6. MUST TRY THIS TOO — THANKS, MM! WE’VE ONLY USED IT FOR ATCHARA … THE GATA IN YOUR RECIPE IS A NOVELTY FOR ME.

  7. Hi Ms. Betty, you mentioned your nephew is coming in January. Would he be able to bring back to Canada the palayok I have gotten for you? :)

  8. This looks delicious MM! I can imagine the crunch of the sigarilyas.

    Hi bettyq ! – yes I do know where to get seeds. At least the green ones I can get. Let me know if you need assistance. I can get them to your nephew.
    I tried growing them a couple of years ago too. Same thing, only a few germinated but once they did, they gave quite a harvest for some time. I tried harvesting them young – cute too.
    I love sigarilyas in Bicol Express . Once too, a Thai native in Chiang Mai Thailand (our liaison officer during our athlete days) brought us a Thai dish with sigarilyas and ground beef that was quite fiery as well.

  9. Hey Gej…thanks for the offer but I already bought the burgundy seeds (I wanted 5 packages but they only had 2 left and green ones as well on-line last night….found only 1 SELLER! Would you be interested in any seeds that I have? I have a myriad of them! …maybe you could use them in January if it is not too late? To name a few…watermelon radish, Bright Lights Swiss Chard (different colors),
    French filet bean called Maxibel, Pole bean called Fortex (tastes and looks like sitao but shorter than sitao), dry bean called Bartolo (I use them fresh though after I shelled them and use in curries), Kelsae onions seeds …sweet onions like Walla Walla (given the right conditions can grow to be the world’s largest onion!), white Mirai corn seeds….and lots more!

    Ohhhh…yes, please Carol! If anything, I will ask him to hand carry and put his other stuff in his check-in luggage! First thing that I will make when the weather warms up is your SINAING na TULINGAN…done with charcoal briquets! Now please allow me to send you a few pounds of dried scallops and dried shrimp! MARAMING SALAMAT!!!!!!

  10. I love em.. mom cooks the best atchara, slightly sour, more on the sweet side.. and I like it paired with Galunggong… simple yet something I adore! put in pickled eggs and that’s it!

  11. I have never tried it in sinigang (note to self: cook sinigang soon!) but I have eaten it other forms: dinengdeng, ginataan, Bicol express, sauteed with bagoong and kamatis, blanched and dressed with guinamos and kalamansi…

    Now this! Perfect for people like me who can’t live a day without veggies. =)

  12. OK, Gej….I will trade ALLLLLLL of my seeds (whatever I have left ….I have a lot and you can choose which ones you would like to grow and maybe donate the the ones you don’t want to other farmers?.,,,and if you have any PINOY CALABAZA seeds you could part with, that would be great! OHHHHH….I found more seeds in the freezer! This is something you would like to plant….YELLOW mini MIRAI! They are not that big in terms of length…about 5 to 6 inches…BUT THE EARS ARE PACKED WITH FLAVOUR AND THE SWEEEEEETEST CORN YOU WILL EVER TASTE!…same goes for the white ones though they are much bigger than the Mini Yellow Mirai. Once you and MM have a taste of this corn, you will NEVER go back to Peaches and Cream/Honey and Cream or any other Cream variety! But you know that they cross pollinate ….so be sure to isolate them if you want to let some go to seed!

    I also have vanilla beans that maybe Mrs. Gej could use? …make vanilla extract using rum or vodka then bottle them!

  13. Yam Tua Phuu is one of my favorites aside from Corn Som Tam (Som Tam Khao Phot) during my more than 15 years of stay in Thailand. they are both addictive and filling.

  14. thanks for this, MM. am always tempted by good-looking veggies, but the only dishes i know for sigarilyas are plain guinisa and ginataan. this is definitely a keeper.

    Pits, manila…thanks for the achara tip..why didn’t i ever think of that before?

  15. bettyq, i want to send you some davao stuff through your nephew. would he be willing to bring it, and how do i send it to him?

  16. one of my fav thai salads. try throwing fried, salted skin-on peanuts next time. also a thinner coconut cream works better so things don’t clump up. I’ve made this a few times and didn’t turn out too ok because the sigarilyas available would be so tough and fibrous. best to work with young and tender ones like you did.

  17. Wow betty q1 Excited. I’ll come up with a collection of Pinoy veggie seeds for you as as well. Want a “Bahay Kubo” (…sigarilyas at mani, sitaw, bataw, patani ….) garden in Vancouver?

  18. @gej, i was always at a loss about ‘sigarilyas’ in that song– we called it ‘pallang’ from my neck of the woods ; we learn something everyday.

  19. YES, YES, YES, too, Gej!!! …would love to plant those. In fact, besides my plots, I have a little 4by 6 plot in what we call the experimental beds. That would be so neat to plant a few seeds in that plot and introduce other gardeners to a BAHAY KUBO (Nipa HOuse translation?) type of gardening? There are also quite a few Pinay gardeners in the community garden as well as Indonesian/Malaysian gardeners.

  20. MM, just want to tell you i made this for lunch today and, paired with fried fish, it was great! we loved it! the shrimp i put were a little too big, so i will split them lengthwise next time. also, since real dayap are hard to find here, i used calamansi juice for the dressing, and added a little grated biasong rind. the biasong have very little juice and are almost all seeds. the coconut cream tied all the flavors together and gave it a nice finish. this is definitely going to be a mainstay in our veggie repertoire.

    by the way, the gulay vendor said that lately, foreigners have been buying a lot of sigarilyas, for its purported health benefits.

  21. millet, glad you enjoyed it. I too was blown away by its simplicity and delicious results. Glad to hear kalamansi works well, now we can all enjoy this salad year round… anonymous paul, yes these would be nice with peanuts (they were in the original recipe) but I didn’t have any around when I made the salad a few days ago…

  22. It’s indeed superb! These wing-bean is very common in my place and we just use or eat it in a usual way. I love your salad. I must try it. Thanks for another healthy and easy to do salad.

  23. you can also add shrimps and minced pork and top it off with some dried, crunchy, spicy/sweet pusit flakes!

  24. Ay ke sarap sarap ng sigarilyas…. Anyway back on March 2012 nagtanim ako ng sigarilyas sa 20 seeds na tinanim ko, dalawa lang ang tumubo sa isang butas pa na pinag taniman ko..yong iba hindi na survived dahil siguro sa init or ewan ko samantalang mag kakatabi naman sila at parehong lupa ang pinag taniman ko.. deniritso ko nang tinanim sa lupa instead na sa paso, but anyway to make the story short, nitong October 2012 namulak lak ng maraming marami. then around November, wowwwwwwwwww ke dami daming bunga ng sigarilyas ang sipag mamunga ng sigrarilyas, kaya ngayon sawang sawa ako sa kak aharvest ng sigarilyas parang patula at sitaw masipag mamanunga…… mabuti nalang maganda ang weather dito sa Tx, sana mamunga siya for the whole year.. can someone tell me kung how much the sigarilyas per pound? gusto ko kasing mag benta nito ini isip ko baka sampo sa isang tali for a 1.00 or 1.50? you think mahal? ang lalaki at ang hahaba organic pa dahil wala akng nilalagay.. kaya ako nag tatanong kasi di ko alam how much per pound, kasi wala akng makitang sigarilyas anywhere dito sa oriental market store.. thank you very much..

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