“All my greasy meat dreams have come true. That’s good.”
Anthony Bourdain, Off the Cuff: Paraguay
My recent foray into the world of chipas has put Paraguay on my front burner. So when our next door neighbor, with whom we’ve been sharing meals once or twice a week during the pandemic, showed up at my door with four kilos of beef, Paraguay is where my thoughts went. Now, traditionally, the dish that inspired this meal is made with bone-in short ribs, tira de asado, and is called Asado a la Olla, an olla being a pot, and that’s actually what I thought he’d handed me. We get these long coils of short cut ribs that you can lay out on the grill and that’s pretty common here, and the bag contained four big coils. I didn’t look closely, and by the time I got everything set up, I wasn’t going to change the dish, even though it turned out these were boneless vacio, or long strips of untrimmed flank steak. They’d still work for the dish, even without the bones. In fact, any cut that can use long, slow cooking will work just fine here.
So, rather than cut individual or paired ribs, I just trimmed off a little of the excess fat and cut these into pieces of similar size. Now, keep in mind that I had nearly four kilos, over eight pounds of steak here, so you can cut back measurements as appropriate. Three chopped onions, two grated carrots, almost a full head of chopped garlic, a cup and a half of white wine, a half cup of soy sauce, some salt and pepper, ground bay leaf (or half a dozen whole ones to remove later), and the juice of a lemon. Not pictured… water. Or, for more flavor, beef or vegetable stock, though not traditional.
Given the quantity I was making, rather than a regular pot, I pulled out my roasting pan and placed it over two burners. High heat, a splash of oil, season the beef pieces with salt and pepper, and brown them off. I had enough that I had to do this in two batches.
Once they’re nicely browned, remove them and set them aside in a bowl.
To the oil and melted fat that remains in the pan add the onions, carrots, and garlic, a little more salt and pepper, and sauté until soft and translucent.
Deglaze with the wine and let that cook off for about a minute.
Add the soy sauce, the bay leaf, and put the meat back into the pan…
Cover with water or stock. Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to medium. Cook for two hours, turning the meat every 15-20 minutes or so. Don’t let all the liquid boil away, add more water to the pot as it reduces during the first hour and a half.
During the last half hour turn the heat back up and let the liquid cook down until you’ve got a thick gravy-like consistency. When ready, turn the heat off, add the lemon juice, mix it in well, taste, adjust salt and pepper if needed.
And… serve. Now, according to the recipe I had, this dish is traditionally served with boiled yuca root, and arroz quesu, or “cheese rice”. Knowing my audience, I knew that what amounts to a savory, cream cheesy rice pudding was not going to go over well. It does sound interesting, but, also, our neighbor’s girlfriend and her sister, who joined us for dinner, are from Paraguay, and when I asked them about it, they’d never heard of it. And they both cook quite a bit. Strange.
It certainly shows up in online searches, and often paired with this meat dish. I couldn’t find anything online about the history or regionality of the dish. Paraguay’s not huge (anymore), but there are definitely differences in the cuisine in different parts of it and so the rice may be a specialty of one particular area. Even this dish has some variation – in some parts of the country tomatoes are added, in others, rocoto chili makes an appearance. We loved this, and so I may experiment a bit with some additions down the line. In the end, since my mind has been on chipas, I decided to accompany the meat with chipa guazú, a sort of corn and cheese custard, along with a salad. I’ll walk you through the former in my next post. And maybe I’ll even make arroz quesu one day just to see how we like it.
