Chipa!

Next week everyone will be eating chipa for Semana Santa ("Holy Week," the few days before Easter). It's a type of bread that gets eaten as breakfast, snack, whatever. Yesterday, I met a 13-year old guy on the bus who attends school from 6 till 11 AM, while his mom is making chipa (pronounce it CHEE puh).  Then, he takes the bus and a basket full of Mom's chipa to a town 30 miles away--almost two hours on the bus in high traffic--to sell at stop lights.  Every. single. day.  Well, he stays home on Sunday, but you get the idea.  13 years old, did I  mention?  His basket is a round, flat one, about 2 feet in diameter, which he stacks high with chipa and balances on his head.  He told me he's never had it fall off his head, but I'm not sure he'd admit it if he had.  ;)

Photo by Marisa

CHIPA TRIVIA:

• Along the main roads of Paraguay, especially where there are bus stops, you'll find folks weaving through traffic, waving cars down, or climbing on the buses to sell chipa.  You're driving in the middle of nowhere on a long road to the next town, and out of the blue there's a chipa gal on the side of the road, flagging you down.  Like the Paraguayan version of a drive-thru.  
• People who sell chipa are called chiperos (men) or chiperas (women).  The chiperas, unfortunately, have a shady reputation, and being a chipera is looked at as the worst sort of job.  I've heard parents using that job to harass their kids about an education, saying something akin to our "What!?  You wanna dig ditches all your life?" 
• Chiperas on the roadside wear special uniforms to identify them, usually a very short skirt, a white apron, and pantyhose.  They are the only Paraguay women that I ever see in pantyhose/stockings.
• Men seem more likely to have the big basket on their heads, balanced on a rolled-up hand towel.  The chiperas usually carry them in a more traditional basket with a handle. 
• Sometimes chipa is shaped into various things, although I haven't figured out yet why they make the  animal shapes.  During Holy Week, sometimes you find chipa shaped like a palm branch.
• At ungodly early hours, small trucks with campershells make their way through all the neighborhoods, their beds stacked full of chipa.  They use loudspeakers to announce their arrival.  Many of them blare out that they are selling chipa barrero, supposedly a bigger, better version.  Imagine being woken from sleep before sunrise, by a man in a truck just outside your window at about a million decibels of sound, screaming, "CHIPA BAREEEEEEEEERRO!  BAREEEEEEERO!"  
• If you are speaking in Guaraní, the word CHEEpuh becomes sheePAH.  

Here's the recipe, although further from the city, I've noticed that people make it without much cheese and form it in the shape of a doughnut, unless it's a roadside stand.  It's harder in the doughnut shape, and the cheese makes it SO yummy, so I prefer this recipe, shaped into dinner rolls or long oval rolls.  Give it a try!

250 grams of pork fat (or butter, Crisco, etc.)
500 grams of soft cheese (Mexican works well, if you can't find Paraguayan cheese)
8 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tbsp salt
2 tsp anise seed
1 kg mandioca, yuca, or cassava starch

1. Mix the fat, the cheese, and the eggs.
2. Dissolve the salt in the milk, then slowly add the starch followed by the anise seeds.
3. Knead the whole batch, till it's nice and smooth.
4. Form ping-pong sized balls or either donut shapes, and bake 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees (slighty less for the donut-shaped ones), until the outside is browned a bit and kinda crusty.  (The inside remains SLIGHTY doughy, so don't try to cook it dry.)  
5. Eat 'em while they're warm, because they are gooey and soft inside.  If they get cold, the crust can be quite hard to bite.
6. It's baked in a brick oven (tatakua) here, but if you don't have one in your backyard, oh well.  Just use your electric oven and pretend it's a tatakua.  I won't tell.