Few things show affection better than a home-cooked meal
prepared with care and devotion. And in this part of the world, there’s a
reason why Iloilo is known as the City of Love. Before all the “touristy
places” popped up around here, visitors were usually just treated to food ---
plenty of it! We’d bring you to Tatoy’s for lechon, to La Paz market for
batchoy, or to Villa Baybay for talaba.
Of course, if you were really special, you’d be fed at home
--- with chicken binakol, or KBL (kadyos, baboy, langka), or milkfish sinigang
soured with batwan. But if an Ilonggo or Ilongga truly loved you, and I mean
TRULY loved you, you’d be treated to LASWA, a very simple vegetable soup dish
prepared by the best cook in the village, with THE INDAY of the house (i.e., the
Madam / Mamita / Donya / Grand Matriarch) overseeing the process. You’d be
told, “Pasensya ka na, laswa lang maserbe namon.”
But then you will quickly realize that the disclaimer is a
big, fat lie. It is not laswa LANG. Because as you take spoonful after spoonful
of the pale green mixture of malunggay, patola, and stock, you will feel a
warmth enveloping your heart, like a hundred magical hands putting back the
broken pieces together again, you will be reacquainted with the happiest
memories of your childhood, when your own mother, or tita or lola cooked your
favorite meal. You will be humbled, and you will have tasted love like you
haven’t tasted it before. Surely, after you’ve left Iloilo, you will taste many
other soup dishes again in your life, but never as good as the laswa that you
were served in an Ilonggo’s home.
