The Southern Cone · Volume 27, Cassava, Maté and the Chaco's Second Kitchen
Sopa paraguaya
Eastern Paraguay
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- 49 sources cited
Declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by the Secretaría Nacional de Cultura, Resolution No. 592/2017. INAN No source consulted for this chapter gives complete gram quantities and timings for a standard home recipe; what follows is the documented ingredient list and process, not an invented recipe.
As tradition built it
About 1 hour, including resting.
Ingredients
The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.
- 500g maize flour
- 4 onion, sautéed, not raw
- 500ml milk
- 2 tbsp cream
- 150g pork fat
- 5 eggs
- 300g fresh queso Paraguay
- water
- to taste coarse salt
Method
- Sauté the onion rather than using it raw.
- Beat the maize flour, milk, cream, pork fat, eggs, queso Paraguay, water and coarse salt into a smooth batter.
- Pour the batter into a well greased dish.
- Bake until the surface is deeply golden and the interior has set but stays moist, "esponjosa por dentro, ligeramente húmeda y con una costra dorada y crujiente en la superficie" (spongy inside, lightly moist, with a golden, crunchy crust on the surface).
Notes
A named palace variant, "sopa paraguaya Palaciega," adds half a kilo of sliced onion and four to five hard-boiled eggs to the base.
What a modern chef changes
The onion cooked to a genuine sofrito, and the crust and crumb engineered as separate problems
Rung 6
Method
- Cook the onion to a proper, softened sofrito rather than a brief sauté, removing more of its raw moisture and sulphur compounds before it meets the batter, for a cleaner set.
- Bake in two stages: a lower, gentler temperature until the custard-like interior has just set, judged by a faint wobble rather than firmness, then a short, hot finish, grill or torch if the reader's oven allows it, to build the crust separately rather than hoping both happen together at one setting. Rung 6.
- Treat the queso Paraguay component as the home-made curd from Rung 2, worked through the batter while still slightly warm, so it partially melts and binds exactly as the traditional cheese would.