Paraguay represents our first dip into South America in this project. As you know, Dawn chose 78 countries at the beginning (the first and the last are England, you recall, to be true to the book), and I’ll admit to you now that they are not evenly spaced. We’re nearing the middle of the journey now, but unless you can see the map of the world covering the whole of the wall in the spare room, with little blobs (sometimes very little) of blutac on each chosen country, slowly being taken away, you won’t appreciate that actually it’s rather Europe-centric. There’s quite a lot of Europe. In fact, I don’t think I ever told you this, but after the 80 dishes were chosen, we went through them, and crossed a load out and tried to spread them slightly better over the continents. Treeland no longer has a look in. South Sandwich Island does! So there are other South American countries, but not many. And of course South America is the continent with the least amount of countries in it, so it’s going to be less represented anyway I guess.
By the way, I’ve just reviewed my first ever blog post, before I even started cooking, the introduction as it were. One of the last lines in it is an assertion that I will tell you all about every dish I make hopefully on the evening of the day that I make it. Oh, how I laughed as I read that. Let’s face it, I’m a bit behind with the old blog writing. I made Paraguay about 6 weeks ago, on 20th March, and I’ve made 4 more since then. It’s about time I caught up really! It reminds me of when I was a teenager writing my diary – all it needed was 5 lines a day at bedtime, but I would always find myself writing about what happened two weeks previously and trying to catch. It made for a God-awful diary, boring as hell, although some of it would probably still be amusing if I read it now. And of course, it’s why I’m blethering now, because 6 weeks is a long time, and I can’t really remember all that much. Oops. Note to self: get on with it, write closer to the cooking and wake up.
Map of Paraguay
Paraguay is in central South America. It is one of only 2 landlocked countries on the continent, the other being its neighbour, Bolivia. The capital city is Asuncion. When researching for this dish, I learnt that there are two main languages in Paraguay: Spanish and Guarani. Guarani, I’m sure you can work out, is one of the original ones before us pesky Europeans came and invaded. I can’t help by notice the “gua” bit in both the name of the country and the language. “Guay” means “born”, whilst “para” means water. Well, well, you learn something new every day, or as they say these days, every day’s a school day.
So what have I learnt about Paraguayan cooking. Well, not a great deal that has stuck in my long-term memory. Maybe I have more of a short-term fact-retaining memory. But long enough to remember sufficient facts to pass a load of exams, get two degrees and a certain amount of legal qualifications (I’m not actually a chef by day!! I know – who’d’ve thought it!) What I noticed most about Paraguayan cooking was that it involves a lot of cheese. Quesú Paraguái is traditional Paraguayan cheese, and they like it a lot. I don’t. I don’t like cheese, Neil throws up at the taste of cheese and feels nauseous at the smell of it cooking, Dawn ain’t keen on the stuff, and Daniel, well it isn’t dinosaurs or chips is it. So a lot of Paraguayan cooking seemed to be off the menu.
They’re quite into breads as well, breads made with cheese, like chipa, which also requires cassava, and I’m not sure how readily available that is in the south of England. Sopa Paraguaya is a popular traditional dish, which as you might guess means Paraguayan soup. But it’s a bit of a misnomer, because actually it’s more of a cornbread, and eaten like slices of cake. I liked the idea of a breakfast dish – we’ve not had any of them yet, and a couple of websites I found had quite a few suggestions. I wanted to make Mandi’o Chyryry for two reasons, 1) because the pictures looked tasty; 2) It’s pronounced mandio shoo-doo-doo which in no way is represented by the letters in its name. But I don’t speak Spanish, and the only recipes I could find in English were hidden behind broken links. Oh and it needed yuca root, again something not supplied in bounty in southern England.
So’o Yo-Sopy and sweet potato
Finally then, I chose So’o Yo-Sopy, otherwise known as beef soup. I used a combination of two websites: Where Latin Meets Lagniappe (another blog site, which I don’t like doing really, but from my research I knew it was authentic) and anngell.tripod.com which has a more authentic feel to the page. So’o Yo-Sopy was very tasty. It asked for cheese, but I left the cheese out. I made the executive decision that it would be just as authentic without it, especially as anngell says it’s only required for sprinkling on top.
The dish requires ground beef, so I bought some beef mince and put it in my trusty Annabel Karmel hand blender, that I got when Dawn was a baby and I was determined (for a few months at least) to make all my own food for her. Too much of a pain in the backside, I resorted to jars of baby food after not too long. Anyway, I have a hand blender, and I used it to make ground beef. I used it later in the recipe as well – once the meat has cooked it rather clumps together, and so I got as much of it as I could, out of the big pot of soup I’d made, blended it all over again, and then plopped it back into the pot. Plop being the operative word – it did splash a bit.
So’o Yo-Sopy is soup, but it seems rather stewy. It has all sorts in it, but I think it is the rice that gives it that filling feeling. Anngell says that “superstition has it that if anyone does not enjoy cooking is present in the kitchen they may cause the So’o Yo-Sopy to separate and spoil the dish”. Well apparently I like cooking, because ours was fine. We ate it with a baked sweet potato, as per the recommendation. But I didn’t really bake them long enough, and Dawn didn’t eat all of hers. The soup was a hit though, and because I had, as usual, made enough for a small army, I ate it for lunch for the rest of the week. I kept forgetting to take a spoon, so had to eat it with a teaspoon and slurp the dregs out of my Tupperware tub . It was a lovely change. A meal I would repeat, but either without the sweet potato and just bread instead, or learn how to bake a sweet potato better!
So’o Yo-Sopy
So’o Yo-Sopy and sweet potato
Ingredients
Beef mince
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium onions, diced
1 green pepper (couldn’t find any in the shops, so I used red pepper instead), finely chopped
4 tomatoes, peeled and chopped. To peel a tomato, it’s best, it turns out, to blanche them. Put some cuts round the skin, quartering or halving the tomato, put them in a pan of hot water for a few minutes, and then the skin comes off easy.
1/2 cup rice
Salt
2 cloves of minced garlic
Method
- Put the ground beef in a large pot and add 10 cups of water. That’s an awful lot (remember to think that, by the way. I did, and I was right).
- Add the rice and the minced garlic and heat on a medium heat.
- Cook for at least 30 minutes. Stir every now and then. Try to break apart the larger pieces of meat, be that by the method I described above, or with a wooden spoon.
- In a different frying pan, heat the oil and fry the onions and pepper until the onions are softened.
- Add the tomatoes and cook until the mixture is thicker, which is about 5 minutes.
- Blend your meat to get it unstuck from each other.
- Stir in the onions, pepper, tomato and some salt and mix well. Don’t add the salt earlier than this or the whole thing might separate apparently.
- Eat the soup.
Around the World in 80 Dishes 