It's my turn this week to create a writing exercise.  What follows are the intructions I emailed.

What is your favorite dish?  Describe why you like it so much without using adjectives that are traditionally associated with food such as tasty, appetizing, mouth-watering, luscious, etc.  The challenge is to come up with a creative way of describing food.  Minimum of 300 words.  Enjoy.

Below is what I wrote: 

Soup No. 5

Lansiao they say is an aphrodisiac.  It is after all made from a bull's testicles so the association of the dish, sometimes called Soup no. 5, with horniness is too obvious if not too tempting to pass up.  

I was first introduced to the dish by college friends one time years ago after a night of serious drinking.  They intentionally waited until I had eaten several spoonfuls before telling me what the dish was made of.  I most probably would have shunned the dish had I known beforehand what the main ingredient was. 

Probably because I was half drunk and starving, I attacked the dish with rare voracity and later, intense relish.  I had discovered a new vice.  By the time my scheming friends revealed to me the secret behind the soup, it was too late.  I was hooked and couldn't care less what body part I was devouring. 

I've been spreading the gospel ever since. 

Most lansiao places, like the one in Mandaue called Lansiao.com or the one in front of Asillo church in Gorordo, are just rundown dirty eateries.  For sure the many patrons that frequent these places don't go there for the ambience so it can only be the food.

What is lansiao anyway?

For me it is steaming hot desire served on a plate.  It is the chew of carnal meat chopped just right into sinewy yet sensuous bites.  It is the slurp of thick reddish soup that looks as dirty as your deepest darkest desires.  It is a clash of flavors that toy with your senses much like perverted sex blurs the differences between pleasure and pain.

It is flirting with peril.  It is going against your trained logic.  For how can something made from an unclean piece of meat and cooked in the filthiest of kitchens be safe much less edible?  Or to-die-for? 

It is like unprotected sex, dangerous yet desired. 

If chocolate is food for the gods then lansiao is food for us imperfect mortals.  It is temptation and danger served on a cheap plastic platter in a dirty sidewalk.

Lansiao is the soup of sin.