Chipa

Ingredients

• Cassava starch500 g
• Paraguayan cheese or brined white cheese400 g
• Eggs3
• Lard or butter120 g
• Milk120 ml
• Aniseed1 tsp
• Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Heat the oven to 220 °C in advance; the dough has to go into a hot one.

   15 min

2. 2

   Beat the softened fat with the eggs and salt until smooth.

   6 min

3. 3

   Work in the grated cheese and the aniseed, rubbing the mass with your hands until the cheese is evenly distributed.

   5 min

4. 4

   Add the starch a little at a time, with the milk, until the dough is firm and pliable.

   8 min

5. 5

   Roll ropes and join the ends into rings about eight centimetres across.

   12 min

6. 6

   Bake twenty-five minutes, to browned patches. Serve warm.

   27 min

About the dish

The base is cassava starch, not wheat flour. It gives the chewy, faintly rubbery inside by which chipá is recognised.

There is no yeast: eggs and the steam from the cheese do the lifting. That is why the oven has to be properly hot — at a low temperature chipá stays flat.

They are eaten in enormous quantities during Holy Week, and in Paraguay they are the most recognisable street food: vendors walk the buses with basketfuls.

Worth knowing

• — Cassava starch cannot be swapped for cornflour. The texture is entirely different, and in Paraguay the result would not be called chipá.
• — The dough should not stick. If it does, add starch a spoon at a time — but not too much, or the chipá comes out dry.
• — They are eaten the day they are baked. By the next day chipá hardens; five minutes in the oven helps only partly.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

420 kcal

Protein

14 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

44 g

More from Paraguay

• Sopa paraguaya — A dense corn and cheese bake with onion which, despite its name, is eaten with a fork.