Thursday, May 27, 2010

Paraguayan Cooking - Vori Vori





At first, I didn't like the smoky smell and flavor of Paraguayan Foods, but after a while (19 years), you realize that it is pretty good and most people's food across the Land will probably have this flavor. Teachers sometimes come in with a smoky hair smell. Sometimes it smells like cocido (burnt sugar and yerba máte mixed with red-hot coals) across the neighborhood. It's actually a very addictive smell and people will always say..."hummmm, I smell cocido!"
Since it's cold and rainy lately, the smoky smell of small fires and coal burning is all over.
One of Oscar's favorite foods is Vori-Vori...this is a chicken soup with little cornball dumplings in it. He especially likes it when I make it on my small coal burner and let it boil away all morning.
Here's my recipe:
Soup:
1 small chicken all cut up
1 onion, chopped
1 pepper, chopped
2 pieces of garlic
salt, pepper to taste
Carrots, potatoes, squash...if you like
Boil for an hour while you form your vori-vori.
Vori-vori:
1 cup corn flour
1/2 cup fresh cheese, crumbled
salt
2 tablespoons flour or self-rising flour
1 egg
hot chicken broth
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Add egg and hot soup, but just enough to make a moist dough. Mix with your hands. After you mix it well, form into small balls (vori) about the size of cherry tomatoes. Drop them all together into the boiling broth. Do not cover. Let boil 10 minutes until the vori is cooked. Add oregano.

7 comments:

Jason said...

Awesome! I think I just figured out what I'm taking to church on Sunday.

I followed your wiki link, and it says that it's "vori vori" because in Guarani that's how you make it plural. According to my podcast teacher, adding "kuera" makes it plural. Why isn't it "vorikuera"? :)

-j

Karen said...

Oscar also disagrees with wikipedia...he says vori-vori means making tiny balls repeating the process several times...making many, many little balls. He gave me some other examples like jeré-jeré...which means like spinning around repeatedly. You can't say jerékuera (hysterical laugh from Oscar) you have to say jeré-jeré. Okay, enough Guarani for today.

Karen said...

This was supposed to be a cooking class not a Guarani lesson...hahaha

Martha said...

I think you made this for us, didn't you? It almost seems like Mom's cream of wheat noodles, but w/o the cheese. If it weren't so hot here today (30C + high humidity), I might consider making this for supper.

heidiannie said...

Sounds good.
I think I'll make it instead of chili some cool day.
Hebrew also uses repetition to make plural, but also to emphasize the importance of a word or concept.

Language is so interesting.
And so is smell, thanks for sharing the smells of Paraguay, today.

Anonymous said...

I never tasted this one before. I think I'll try it sometime with the cornmeal (corn flour?) and cheese. Sounds good.
We were driving in Fairlawn yesterday and just mentioned "this smells just like Paraguay" as we passed some restaurants at lunch time, but we didn't have a name for it :)

Karen said...

hahaha, were they using wood or charcoal?