Mbeju

As tradition built it

Serves 10. About 26 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1kg cassava starch (almidón)
• 1 tbsp salt
• 100g unsalted butter, melted, with some kept for the pan
• 1 glass milk
• 100ml water
• 250g queso Paraguay, grated
• 2 tsp aniseed

Method

1. Mix the starch and salt in a large bowl and make a well.
2. Pour in the melted butter and half the milk and water, and start kneading. Add the rest of the liquid little by little as it needs it.
3. When it turns slightly lumpy, add the cheese and keep working it until it feels sandy.
4. Heat a little of the butter in a frying pan over a medium high heat. Put in enough mixture to make a layer about 1cm thick and press the edges in with a spoon.
5. Cook several minutes a side, until done. Make the rest the same way and serve at once.

Notes

The recipe is Nestlé Paraguay's; it lists aniseed without saying where it goes. Gladis Amarilla, in ABC Color, makes a rather dry dough of starch, a quarter kilo of cheese, margarine and salt with water only, cooks it in a lightly oiled pan, and serves it with cocido.

What a modern chef changes

A more even fat distribution, and a controlled Maillard crust

Rung 1

Method

1. Emulsify the melted butter into the starch and cheese in a high power blender before shaping, exactly as with chipa in Rung 1, for a more even crumb than hand-mixing gives.
2. Cook on a plancha or a very flat, heavy pan held at a genuinely stable, moderate heat rather than a domestic frying pan's more variable surface, giving a more even, controlled Maillard crust across the whole disc rather than a patchily browned one.