Halo-Halo

Halo-halo—properly haluhalo, according to the government Commission on the Filipino Language, but so commonly referred to as halo-halo that I’ll use that name here—is one of the great Asian ice desserts, part of a lineage going back to the tenth century, when the Japanese poet and courtier Sei Shōnagon listed “shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl” as one of the world’s “elegant things.” According to the historian Ambeth R. Ocampo, halo-halo started