jueves, 24 de septiembre de 2009

MBEJU - paraguayan gastronomy

Mbeju: It's a starch cake (starch is a food reserve polysaccharide that supplies about 70 or 80% of the calories consumed by humans around the world), although in its preparation are allowed another ingredients as the farina (manioc flour).
It's a solid sample of the Paraguayan gastronomy, vastly rich in calories. According to some scholars of social history of Paraguay, all the Paraguayan popular gastronomy, which establishes itself as a small family industry after the War of Paraguay against The Triple Alliance (Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, between 1864 and 1870), is really abundant in caloric content, because of the situation that overcame to the country after the conflict. In the aftermath of the war, food was limited, groceries were hard to find. So Paraguayan cooking has a high protein content to make up for the scarcity of every day meal.
To make a traditional mbejú are needed: starch, corn flour, egg, pork fat, thin salt, fresh cheese and milk.To make a variety named "mbejú avevo" (the Guarani phrase for "inflated cake") are used the same ingredients mentioned above but with the pork fat, the eggs and the cheese in larger quantities.To make the "mbejú de fariña" the starch flour is replaced by manioc flour.
The starch is amassed with an amassing stick to then be sifted and weighed. The fat and the crumbled cheese are added. The mixture is whipped until it gets creamy. Eggs, salt and milk are added as the whipping continues. Finally are added the starch and the corn flour, mixing everything using the hands until having a thick powder-like preparation. A greased frying pan is let at the fire, to get a very high temperature. A layer of the mixture of about 1 and half centimeters is put in the pan, squeezing the borders with the back of a spoon. It is cooked for a few minutes, moving the pan so it cooks evenly without burning the center. Helped by a lid of the pan, flip the mbejú on the other side, finishing the cooking the same way mentioned above.
Pictures: Liliana Palacios - text:wikipedia

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