Wednesday 5 August 2015

Further food #2

Another staple of the Paraguayan diet is poroto ('kumanda' in Guarani), a type of bean. Demetria's son's garden produced a lot of this back in March/April time.. Here you can see the vat of dried bean pods and the shelled beans.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Further food #1

Empanadas are a little bit like miniature cornish pasties, and can be purchased round the corner (any corner) for 1000 guaranies, which is approximately 12p.

A step up from this is making your own, for which you need a mould.


You can buy minced meat to make the filling with, or you can grind it yourself, as pictured here, which tastes better (apparently).


Similarly, you can use pre-made pastry circles (as above) or you do that part yourself too, as my friend's mother did for his nephew's birthday. This involved putting the rolled-out dough through what looked like a mangle.


They are most commonly fried, but can be oven-baked too.