From humble to hip

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

How interesting, said  Good Friend M, a young housewife, that laswa has gone from humble to hip and healthy.

In fact, wasn’t there a time when people looked down on the laswa, M asked in her text message  the other day, after reading that piece on the Negrense garden vegetable stew.

These days, not only has laswa gone hip and healthy, it is also hot and haute, served in upscale restaurants even in Manila, and centerpiece of weight management programs of professionals and socialites.  Well, at least the enlightened ones have started recognizing laswa’s healthy properties, and have shifted from the broccoli-and-carrot paradigm to kalabasa-tugabang  when thinking healthy.

One exciting possibility is for laswa to be recognized for its healthy properties, and I am sure it will just continue is rise in the culinary scene.

M said she likes laswa because it isn’t too heavy on the stomach and  her hubby also loves it so  they have it at least once a week. She had one disappointment in that  piece, however: she was looking forward to reading tips on how to cook it.

You got me there, M, I also feel inadequate to write about cooking laswa, much less  to give tips.  Because truth to tell, I’ve had more failures on this than successes, you know, times when you literally have to eat your mistake and swallow your pride along with it.

Reader Inday Edith Pabicon Yngson, commenting on the difficulty in cooking laswa hammered it on the head: “It must be, still green but cooked!”

It takes the expert hands of those attached to the earth, like farmers and their wives, to do laswa properly. Okay, let me clarify – the laswa I and M are talking about is the laswa that highlights the refreshing taste of veggies, combining them to come up with new tastes and flavors. What I mean here is, anybody can do this vegetable stew, but not everybody can deliver it the right way.

I turn to the helper for the laswa, and this is where I have truly appreciated the complexity of this iconic Negrense dish. To this day, I cannot understand how my helper can whip up laswa on a regular basis, each time serving something unique and delicious.  I keep trying, and maybe, somewhere down the line, I’ll be able to unlock its mysteries.

But I do know a trick or two people use,  especially in making the soup base. Someone I know pan roasts shrimp shells and pounds them and adds them to the water. This is of course a variation from the old way of using the shells, without roasting them, for the base.

Some people vary things. Instead of just using shrimps, they use crab meat. Or dried tiny shrimps we call kalkag. Or a combination of two or even three of these.  Some people use left-over fried fish,  but that is more like the Tagalog dinengdeng.

Another tactic is to dry sauté the shrimps or crab meat – throw the onions, garlic and tomatoes along with whatever meat you are using into the hot pan without oil and allow their juices to ooze out before putting in your water. A word of caution though: your pan must be thick enough so it cooks, but does not burn the ingredients*

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