The Southern Cone · Volume 27, Cassava, Maté and the Chaco's Second Kitchen
Kivevé
Eastern Paraguay
Illustration
- Time
- 50 minutes
- Researched
- 49 sources cited
Declared National Heritage by DINAPI, Paraguay's national intellectual property body, Resolution RG No. 05/2018, indicating institutional recognition of its everyday cultural importance rather than festival-only status. Kivevé, Wikipedia No gram quantities were found in the sources gathered.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 50 minutes.
Ingredients
- 500g andaí squash (the reddish-orange squash the dish is named for)
- 1½ cups water
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sugar, a little
- ½ cup maize flour
- 3 tbsp margarine
- 150g queso Paraguay
Method
- Boil the andaí squash with water, salt and a little sugar until tender.
- Purée the squash and return it to its own cooking liquid along with maize flour and margarine.
- Cook further until thickened.
- Finish with queso Paraguay stirred through at the end.
What a modern chef changes
A smoother purée, and the cheese treated as a finishing element rather than a stirred-in one
Rung 1
Method
- Purée the cooked squash in a high power blender and pass it through a chinois for a genuinely silky base, rather than the coarser texture a hand masher gives.
- Reserve the queso Paraguay to finish rather than cook it in, grating or crumbling it over the hot porridge at the table so its moisture and mild acidity read as a fresh top note against the sweeter, cooked squash base, rather than dissolving fully into it.