Tatakua:-)

Thanks for your amusingly interesting comments on my previous post:-)! I had never imagined that "someone" would refer my tatakua as the Kings' Tomb in Kyŏngju, hahahahaha!

Well, that thingo I asked you to guess is Paraguayan traditional open air brick+mud oven called "tatakua". Nope, it is not Spanish but Guarani (did you guys know that Paraguay has two official languages, Spanish and Guarani, being the latter the indigenous population's oral language???) and it literally means fire (tata)+hole (kua). It is a quintessential component of Paraguayan picture, really. I bet my chocolate that there is not one home in countryside Paraguay without a tatakua in the backyard:-).

And the bread thing you saw in tatakua is chipa. An icon of Paraguayan cuisine. I added the recipe to this post so you can imagine its taste:-). A town called Eusebio Ayala is reknown for making the yummiest chipa in the country -chipa barrero-, to the point all bus drivers (and not bus drivers too) on road actually do the chipa stop in Eusebio Ayala. Strongly recommended! hj

Chipa Barrero

250g of LARD!!!
8 eggs
500g of Paraguayan cheese (basically a curdled stage of of cheese making process before its massive solidification)
1 tablespoon of anise seed
1 tablespoon of coarse salt
1 cup of milk
1250g of mandioca flour (heavy-feeling-very-starchy flour from Manihot esculenta, also known as manioc, yuca, cassava, manioca, tapioca, Brazilian arrowroot OR mhogo, thank you very much)

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Mix lard, egg and cheese. Add anise seed, salt+milk and mandioca flour (shift, of course), Knead more or less well. Shape chipa (traditionally they are ring shaped) and bake in very hot oven (250°C) for 25 min or in tatakua for 15 min. By the way, they were traditionally wrapped in banana leaves before their glorious entry to hot tatakua and further metamorphosis into edible-and-very-high-in-calories-yummy chipa.

You can always substitute lard for butter, Paraguayan chesse for mix of other cheeses (if so, add some lemon juice... hint, hint!) and part of mandioca flour for corn flour... although it would never taste the same:-S... Again, with all that saturated&non saturated fat plus cholesterol running through the blood vessel... maybe some modification tot he original recipe is not a bad idea after all...

Original recipe on http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/lustig/guarani/chipa.htm but personalised (mine, of course) touches here and there. Translation by me.
Tatakua photo comes from google images and as for chipa photo, http://www. mucha-suerte.com