LAS-WA: The most famous Traditional Vegetable Soup

Hello there! I’m sharing with you my favorite Asian dish which I really admire, and all of the vegetables that I used here came from my garden. Whenever I feel tired and when I experience something usual with my health, I always crave to prepare this food and it really gives me more energy. After that I could feel that my body including my digestion and blood flow gets better.
This is one of the most common dishes that you can see in a typical household who lives in the rural areas. It is called Las-wa in Visayas – healthy yet affordable.
It’s basically the combination of mixed native Asian vegetables that usually can be found in backyard garden. These vegetables include, moringa, sweet potato tops, beans, okra, squash, eggplant, and spinach.

Somewhere in North Luzon, people called this dish as Law-uy. I also met a friend from Central Luzon who called the same dish as Dining-ning.
As you noticed, this one dish has different names in the Philippines because the country has a lot of islands, and people were using so many different dialects.

Ingredients:

1. Chopped Mixed Vegetables
2. Fish sauce or dried Fish as natural flavor
3. Salt
4. Water
5. Spices (garlic, onion, pepper, chili-optional)

How to Cook:
Boil the water with and your preferred spices
Add all the solid vegetables until tender, add fish sauce or dried fish
Then, add green leafy vegetables, seasoned with salt and pepper, and enjoy

Personally, Las-wa is not just an ordinary dish because whenever someone offered a bowl of it, I could feel the taste of my Childhood. Some memories from my home town somewhere in Iloilo, Philippines were coming back. Thus, I could say that Las-wa became my comfort food.

How about in your place, what’s the most well-known dish that you always serve?