KO EN Paraguayan Bread⏱ 105 minEdit history

Sopa Paraguaya (Baked Cornmeal and Cheese)

Name: Sopa Paraguaya (Baked Cornmeal and Cheese)
Prep time: 35 min
Cook time: 1 h 10 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: Paraguayan
Ingredients: 300 g coarse cornmeal; 400 ml milk; 400 g fresh curd cheese; 4 eggs; 2 onions; 100 g lard; 1 tsp salt; 1 tbsp lard; 1 tbsp coarse cornmeal

The name means Paraguayan soup and it is a cornbread you cut with a knife. It is one of Paraguay's national dishes, and ko.wikipedia files it next to cornbread — which is useful, because both answer the same problem and answer it differently. Cornmeal has no gluten-forming protein at all. Cornbread solves that with soda, buttermilk and a smoking hot pan; this solves it with fresh curd cheese and beaten egg. What holds the block together is not starch, so it sets moist and dense rather than crumbly.

Ingredients

8servings

The batter (one 20x30cm dish)
coarse cornmeal · polenta grade; cornflour or starch will not do300 g
milk400 ml
fresh curd cheese · queso Paraguay, or queso fresco, feta or ricotta salata400 g
eggs · whites and yolks separated4
onions · finely sliced2
lard · or butter; Paraguay uses lard100 g
salt · adjust to how salty the cheese is1 tsp
For the dish
lard · to grease the dish1 tbsp
coarse cornmeal · to dust the dish1 tbsp

Steps

Cook the onions in the lard for 12 minutes. Not to brown them — to soften them completely. The 100g of lard looks like a lot; it is the only fat in the dish and all of it goes into the batter with the onions.
⏲ 12 min
Heat the milk until it steams, take it off, pour it over the cornmeal and stir well. Cover and leave 20 minutes. Coarse cornmeal takes time to hydrate — the same problem farinata rests four hours for.
⏲ 20 min
Heat the oven to 180C. Grease the dish heavily with lard, dust it with cornmeal and tip out the excess.
⏲ 10 min
Stir the onions and all their lard into the hydrated cornmeal, then the egg yolks. Tear the cheese in by hand, in coarse pieces. Do not grate it and do not melt it in. In this dish the cheese is structure rather than flavour: it stays as lumps and holds the batter together.
⏲ 10 min
It has to be a fresh curd cheese that does not flow when it melts. Dairy and heat sorts cheeses by how they melt, and one that stretches like mozzarella or goes oily like cheddar is no use here. This is the same property saganaki relies on to hold its shape, put to work inside a batter.
⏲ 1 min
Whisk the whites to just short of stiff peaks and fold them in in two additions. There is no baking powder and no yeast in this at all, so the egg is the only lift. It does not rise much, and it is not meant to.
⏲ 7 min
Pour into the dish and level it to about 3cm deep. Deeper than that and the surface dries before the middle sets.
⏲ 3 min
Bake 50 minutes, until the top is deep gold and a skewer comes out clean. Pools where the cheese has melted and browned on the surface are normal.
⏲ 50 min
Cool in the dish 20 minutes before cutting. Cut hot it falls apart. Cold it firms up, so lukewarm is when it is best.
⏲ 20 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Against cornbread: ko.wikipedia lists cornbread in this dish's "see also", and that comparison is where this page starts. The problem is identical — cornmeal has no gluten-forming protein — and the answers are not. Cornbread uses the gas from soda and buttermilk plus a crust off a smoking pan; this uses cheese and egg. Which is why cornbread crumbles and this does not.
Chipa guasu: made with fresh corn, boiled and blended, instead of cornmeal. Much moister and sweeter. Paraguay treats them as two different dishes.
Sopa so' o / sopa de choclo: the same batter slackened and baked thin, or layered.
About the name: the story usually told is that a cook of President Carlos Antonio López put too much cornmeal into a soup, it set solid, and it went to the table anyway. What is checkable is the other half: in Paraguay this is the thing that sits beside a soup, or beside an asado, and the things that sit in that place have long been called sopa.
Regionally: it is eaten in north-east Argentina and southern Brazil too, as ko.wikipedia notes. Paraguay is the country that made it a national dish.
Against arepas, cachapa and pupusa: all three griddle a corn dough or batter in a pan. This is the only one that pours a batter and bakes it.

Tips

Do not use cornflour or fine meal. Polenta-grade coarse cornmeal is what leaves grain you can feel; fine meal sets like a paste.
Tear the cheese, do not grate it. Grated, it disperses through the batter and holds nothing together. Pieces around 1.5cm are what you want.
Salt after tasting the cheese. Queso Paraguay is fairly salty and feta is saltier. With a salty cheese you may want no added salt at all.
Do not cut the lard. There is no cream and no butter in this besides. Take the fat down and it bakes dry and crumbly, which is to say it becomes cornbread.
Lukewarm is when it is best. Straight from the oven it falls apart; out of the fridge it is firm. The next day, fry slices in butter on both sides.