#6 Paraguay
- Jen
- Sep 9, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
Paraguayans are the absolute luckiest to have half of the biggest single source of renewable energy en el mundo! Completed in 1984, the Itaipu Dam impounds the Paraná River on the border between Brazil and Paraguay and is jointly owned by both nations. It sits in a “binational zone” which is kind of a no-man’s land between the two national borders.
I don’t think any number of exclamation marks are going to communicate my excitement about this structure, but trust me, I’m bloody excited!
It’s one of the most expensive things ever built but it provides about 15% of Brazil’s energy requirements and 90% of Paraguay’s, and it’s all renewable. Producing the equivalent electricity using oil would throw 38 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere annually (citation needed).
The dam is a composite dam formed of a hollow concrete gravity dam, with earthfill and rockfill sections. Its maximum height is almost 200m! 12.3million m³ of concrete was needed to build it…that’s like 200 stadiums!
The spillway (the overflow structure that lets out water so that the dam does not overtop) has a capacity of 62,200m³/s, which is FORTY times greater than the nearby Iguaçu Falls.
AND, it’s one of the wonders of the modern world.
Oh…oops…sorry…I’ve done it again haven’t I? This is a food blog…well I’ve only brought dams up in 2 out of 6 countries so far.
Food
I haven’t been to Paraguay, but I have been to all three of the countries bordering it. The food in Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia is quite different so I have no idea what to expect in Paraguay.
Let's find out!
Paraguayans eat a lot of corn, meat and dairy products. I’ve come across a lot of recipes for creamy, meaty soups and, like their neighbours, they also enjoy an asado - basically a barbeque, but I’ll come back to that in another country.
All of the South American countries I’ve visited have had their own version of empanadas and I did enjoy comparing them across borders…now I think about it, it’s hardly surprising I put weight on during that trip! Well, turns out I would have got even bigger had I visited Paraguay. Their empanadas are fried rather than baked and they eat them in a sandwich! I do love a secondary carb in bread (chip butties, burritos) but I’m not sure how I feel about a fried pastry sandwich.
Sopa Paraguaya is the national dish, and despite sopa being Spanish for soup it’s actually not technically a soup. Legend has it (is it a legend if it’s only a two centuries old?) that the first president of the country, Don Carlos Antonio López, was a) really fat, and b) really enjoyed a milky, cheesy, eggy soup but one day his cook added too much cornflour and accidentally produced a solid soup. He loved it and a national dish was born.
Chipas are cheesy bread rolls and are the staple for the nation, rich and poor alike. They’re sold by street vendors on every corner and, it sounds like, on every straight too, by chiperas. One of the things I really loved about South America is that for most people, food doesn’t come solely from the supermarket. I love that it’s normal to buy different things in different places. In Paraguay, as you do in Bolivia and Brazil, it seems that you pick up your cheesy bread on your walk home from work at a little stall in the street 😊.
Chipas sound similar to the Brazilian pão de queijo, which were incredible, so I’m going to get baking!
Baking
Chipas are made from tapioca (see Cook the World tropical root & tuber crop lesson #2) and Paraguayan cheese. I used this recipe, with an mixture of Parmesan and Manchego cheeses. The flour is gluten-free and there are no raising agents so it’s hard to go wrong: no proving required and can’t over-knead. I completed the entire process within an hour.
So, chipas are wonderful! As with most bread, they’re better warm than room temp, and as you’d expect from unleavened bread, they’re pretty dense. The texture was also quite crumbly but definitely in a good way, and they had the most fantastic crust. They were also incredibly cheesy, which is hardly surprising considering the mountain of cheese that went into them! There was a nice balance of saltiness and nuttiness from the Parmesan and Manchego.
For some reason I went slightly OTT and made 20 of these bad boys but I was heading to Cornwall for KA's non-hen-hen the next day so took my batch of cheesy balls of joy with me where they were a well-received addition to a picnic on the beach. I also froze a couple and they were just as good defrosted and heated up again.
I can definitely see myself making these as an accompaniment for barbeques as they’re so yummy and so quick and easy to make. Another Cook the World success.
The saucepan says...SÂO TOMÉ and PRÍNCIPE.
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