PARAGUAY: THE FOOD

It’s taken a long time to come to this meal. I took one of those rare breaks because the kids started back to school, and I spent the entire weekend that I was supposed to be cooking running around trying to get them school supplies and school uniforms. Plus, sometimes you just need a break. But it’s good to be back at it again. 

The perfect accompaniment to pretty much any meal.

So, today I started with the Sopa Paraguaya, or Paraguayan Cornbread. I dragged out my blender and put in 1 ½ c of frozen corn (that had been thawed) and blended it until it was smooth and poured it into a bowl. In that bowl, I added 1 ½ c of yellow cornmeal, 2/3 c of milk, ¼ c olive oil, 1 ½ c of grated muenster cheese, and 1 tsp of salt and stirred until it was all mixed together and smooth. I sautéed some onions in oil until they were transparent and soft. I put the onions into the corn mixture and stirred them in. In a small bowl, I beat 3 egg whites until they formed peaks and set it to the side while I beat the 3 egg yolks until they were thick. I carefully folded the egg yolks into the egg whites and then added this to the corn mixture, making sure everything is mixed well. At this point, I preheated my oven to 400ºF and greased a 8-9” shallow baking dish with butter and 2 Tbsp of grated Parmesan cheese, shaking the pan slightly to spread it evenly. Once I poured the batter in, I drizzled the top with 1 Tbsp of melted butter and baked it for 45 minutes. I absolutely loved this. It was thick and cheesy at the same time, but because I used muenster cheese, it was a subtler flavor. I think I left mine in the oven until the last possible second—any longer, it would’ve been burnt. But it was good.

Not quite exactly what I envisioned, but I should try it again and do it correctly.

The main dish for today is Pan de Carne, or Paraguayan Meat Loaf. My dad would be so happy knowing that I’m making meat loaf.  This is pretty easy to make. In a large bowl, I mixed together all of the main ingredients: 2 lbs of ground beef, a little flour, a pinch of nutmeg, chopped onion, parsley, thyme, ground cumin, garlic, an egg, salt, and pepper. On a baking sheet, I laid out a sheet of aluminum foil and spread out my ground beef mixture on the foil. Down the middle of the mixture, I spread out my pieces of shredded carrots, sliced green pepper and 3 hardboiled egg that I sliced up. Then I used the foil to help roll up the meat into a log shape. I used the foil to help keep it closed, and I baked this in a 350ºF oven for 50-60 minutes. There were a couple of things I did without thinking of the consequences that kind of messed this up. First of all, I had this sitting seam-side down, so all of the juices leaked out into the baking sheet. And because it did this, it turned out pretty dry, and a lot of the spices I feel leaked out with it because it was also on the bland side. Lesson learned.

Actually, this was quite refreshing. Quite a nice salad for summer.

To go with this, I made Ensalda de Mandioca. The first thing I did was peel the skin off of the yucca roots (also called tapioca or manioc or mandioca). I chopped it into smaller pieces and boiled it with some salt until it was soft. When it was cool, I combined it with some soy sauce, olive oil, garlic, and capers (in lieu of chopped onions). I arranged endive leaves on a plate and put this mixture in the center. Then I mixed together some grated carrots, black olives, and tomatoes together and topped it with parsley. I spread this around the outside of the yucca mixture. And to finish this off, I placed avocado slices on the outside of the plate, drizzling them in a seasoned sauce of olive oil, sesame oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. This was pretty tasty. It was my first time cooking yucca/cassava and eating it in this way. It almost had the consistency of a potato but a little reedy. The soy sauce overpowered any of its natural flavor in this dish. I actually kind of liked this. It was a nice counter dish to the richness/heartiness of the meat and cornbread.

Overall, this turned out to be a really good meal. I really loved this.

Once again, the news has me thinking and overthinking. All day yesterday and today, I couldn’t escape reading about the violence in Virginia from those damn Nazis and white supremacists. Living in a conservative state, it makes me nervous when I hear about this kind of stuff. Especially seeing how I’m married to a black man and have two mixed-race children. I think our educational system has failed us. And it’s failed us all. This is all the result of selective education, hand-picking what they want us know, leaving out the bad parts, telling us we wouldn’t be able to handle the truth, and undermining the entire educational system on a whole. When you have generations of lessons that aren’t based in fact and misconstrued truths, this is what you get. We’re more alike as humans than they care to know. We are better than this.

Up next: Peru