Sopa paraguaya

Ingredients

• Corn flour400 g
• Paraguayan cheese or brined white cheese500 g
• Onions4
• Milk400 ml
• Eggs5
• Lard or butter150 g
• Sweetcorn — kernels200 g
• Saltto taste

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

   Slice the onion thin and sweat it in the fat over a low heat for twenty minutes, until soft and sweet.

   22 min

2. 2

   Pour the milk over the onion, take it off the heat and cool it to lukewarm.

   12 min

3. 3

   Crumble the cheese and mix it with the corn flour and the sweetcorn kernels.

   8 min

4. 4

   Stir in the onion and milk mixture and the yolks, salting cautiously; the cheese is salty already.

   6 min

5. 5

   Whip the whites to firm peaks and fold them in with a spatula in three additions.

   8 min

6. 6

   Spread the mixture into a greased tin in a four-centimetre layer.

   4 min

7. 7

   Bake at 190 °C for fifty minutes, to a deep golden crust. Rest it twenty minutes before cutting.

   72 min

About the dish

The name survives a kitchen mistake: by the legend, a cook of President López in the nineteenth century put too much corn flour into a soup and produced a bake. The name stayed.

The onion is sweated long, until sweet, and it is half the flavour. Fried fast it turns sharp, and what is wanted is a soft sweet base under salty cheese.

The egg whites are whipped separately and folded in at the end. They give the bake lift and keep it from setting like a brick — without that step the point is lost.

Worth knowing

• — Fold the whites into a cooled mixture. In a hot one they collapse instantly and there is no lift.
• — The cheese has to be salty and crumbly. A melting cheese gives a stringy mass instead of a crumbling bake.
• — Cut it only when completely cold. Hot, it falls apart and no layers show on the cut face.

Nutrition

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

Calories

540 kcal

Protein

22 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

42 g

More from Paraguay

• Chipa — Bread rings of cassava starch and cheese, with no wheat and no yeast.