A Little Bit of Everything in a Bowl
A little bit of everything. Well, yes. That is certainly what Guisadong Monggo is all about. As we all know, monggo is one of the most popular dishes in the Philippines because of its delicious taste yet cheap price. But in Davao, it is distinctly different. Your typical monggo here is composed of monggo beans, alugbati, kalabasa, bulad and gata, typically unique, right? Well, it is because of one reason: Davao is composed of people from different cultures. Thus, the Monggo in Davao is all about the Davaoeño mixture of different cultures; a little bit of everything.
Making Guisadong Monggo is as easy as 1, 2, and 3. To start it off, soak the monggo beans overnight in order for the monggo to be softened. Next, dispose the used water and prepare all your ingredients: the: alugbati, kalabasa and bulad (a dried and salted fish that is a popular dish in the Philippines)—all sliced into small and consumable pieces. Next, put two cups of monggo and five or six cups of water in a pan. Let it boil for 20-30 minutes and if needed, add more water. Wait until the monggo absorb the liquid and until there is only a little amount of liquid on the pan. In another pan, heat up some oil. Sauté some garlic, onions, tomatoes, and lastly, the bulad. After doing so, add the monggo and lastly the gata. Mix them all together and add some salt and pepper to suite your taste. Your Davao-made Monggo with alugbati, kalabasa, bulad and gata is now ready to tickle your taste buds! Bon appetit!
The olfactory valves of a hungry customer catch the best feature of a dish first. Guisadong Monggo, the ingredient bulad, has that pungent smell of saltiness that could take over the smell of all the other ingredients. They smell only plain when in the dish but individually, these vegetables smell like the soil in the ground which is not really inviting for people. However, the gata smells like your favorite milk but less sweet, and it’s creamier. Because of the plain scents of the other ingredients, the strong salty smell of bulad combined with the gata give the inviting aroma to the dish. It has that salty smell that sometimes could irritate your nose but is not as strong as ordinary bulad because it is swimming in the creaminess of the gata.
When you first see the dish, you'd probably say it's gross. For its color is an unusual shade of green and its soup looks slimy due to the mixture of different ingredients. The aforementioned ingredients, when mixed into the boiling water create a soup that seems to have cream, though it really doesn’t have any. On the other hand, the monggo beans look so good because it appears to be so soft and easy to eat. The kalabasa looks inviting for it looks so delicate and soft. The tiny pieces of bulad aren't really visible though. Generally, the vegetables in the dish look so easy to chew and, though it looks slimy, the creamy soup seems to be a great addition to the whole flavor and presentation of the dish which makes it distinctly Davao. The moment a spoonful of Davao’s version of the Monggo dish enters in your mouth, the primary sensation you would notice is its creaminess. The softened monggo beans in this dish create a sandy feeling on your tongue as it dissolves, giving you a tang of its natural tastelessness. Since this dish is mixed with bulad, it makes a perfect blend of saltiness and sticky-blandness making you crave for rice. The taste of other veggies in the dish such as kalabasa which is slightly sweet and almost tasting like peanuts and alugbati which doesn’t have a strong taste but distinct in the dish for its slimy texture, rises above the plain but captivating savor of mongo beans. Eating Monggo with kalabasa, alugbati, bulad and gata is a sure deal to close when you visit the Promised Land, Davao.
