Laswa aka sick soup
I’ve already established that cooking, for me, is pure experimentation, which is why I can never cook the same thing twice. I can provide you the basic ingredients, but they don’t really come with measurements (a dash of this, a little of that) and sometimes I may end up adding an herb or two or some cheese (everything goes well with cheese) to the same dish. The only consistent ingredient in everything I cook is… love. If I cook for you, it means I love you. (So yeah, C, now you know why I cook for you at least three times a week. Make of that what you will haha.)
Earlier, I came across this recipe in thePhilippine Star called laswa, one of my favorite Ilonggo dishes. I had always thought there was something special about it that I could never replicate but it turns out laswa is just another iteration of one of my “original” (or so I thought) recipes, the sick soup. C gave it that name years ago, after I first cooked it for him when he was sick. Before that, I simply called it my vegetable soup.
Back when I lived alone, getting sick was a pain - literally and figuratively. Being a teenager living away from home, getting sick meant I was left to my own devices: no one to bring me to the doctor, buy me medicines, or cook for me. And that was how I came up with the sick soup, my lazy comfort food. I’d throw in okra, bamboo shoots, saluyot, eggplant, and pechay - stuff I could easily get from the neighborhood talipapa. Laswa has all that plus squash. And apparently, it’s the same recipe as the Ilocano dinengdeng or inabraw, with bagoong isda instead of the commercial fish sauce.
I have yet to try my sick soup with squash, but I guess that would give it a sweetish flavor. Or I can use sweet potato to make it even sweeter and thicker. Okra and saluyot give it that slimy texture (which I love) and the bamboo shoots give it a distinct earthy flavor.
It’s been a while since I made my sick soup, mostly because the veggies I’ve been getting lately are frozen ones, and I miss it. I still get some salad greens but buying talipapa stuff from our neighborhood supermarket is an exercise in patriotism. How can you love this country when one lousy eggplant costs nearly a dollar? Meanwhile, my siblings who live in a first-world country can get a dozen eggplants for less than that.
So what did I have for dinner tonight? Leftover pasta. Because when I’m home alone, no matter how much I love myself, I’d rather reheat food than cook.
Sick Soup/Laswa/Dinengdeng/Inabraw
Ingredients
Okra
Saluyot (apparently called jute leaves, jute mallow, or Egyptian spinach)
Eggplants
Bamboo shoots
Pechay (bok choy, Chinese white cabbage, Chinese chard, snow cabbage)
String beans
Beans
Squash
Sweet potato
Or any other veggies you would love to eat with bagoong
Fish sauce
Bagoong na isda (ferrmented fish sauce)
Shrimp broth if desired
Directions
Boil the hard veggies first - squash, sweet potato (yes, after you peel and cube them).
Add the other veggies.
Put some fish sauce or bagoong, adjust as needed.
Enjoy with fried pompano or air fried salmon belly. And rice of course.
