Category Archives: Global Exchange

Bal-Po Stew: The Empire’s Recipe

By Lewis Ebert

Bal-Po Stew in the "Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Diet." Figure scanned by CADAL from the Peking University Library displayed as part of the Open Source Chinese Text Project.
Bal-Po Stew in the “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Diet.” Figure scanned by CADAL from the Peking University Library displayed as part of the Open Source Chinese Text Project.

The third entry of the section entitled “Strange Delicacies of Combined Flavors” in the medieval Mongol cookbook, “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Food and Drink,” is the Bal-Po stew, a recipe that exemplifies the multivalent food culture of the Yuan dynasty:

Bal–po Soup [Stew] (Nepali Soup) (fig 1)

It supplements the centre, and brings down qi. It extends the diaphragm.

Mutton, cardamom pods (five), chickpeas (500ml, pulverize and remove the skins), Chinese radish.

Boil ingredients together to make a soup. Strain broth. Chop meat and radish. Add the mutton cut into coin-sized pieces to the soup, then add cooked Chinese radish [4 grams] of saffron, [8 grams] of Turmeric, [8 grams] of Black (“Iranian”) Pepper, [2 grams] of chicory, and coriander leaves.

Adjust flavours with a little salt. Eat over cooked aromatic non-glutinous rice. Add a little Vinegar. [1]

“The Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Food and Drink,” compiled in 1330 by Hu Sihui, occupies a unique position in the history of Eurasian cuisine. Written under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, it is designed to offer life-extending medical solutions for the emperor and to foster a healthy diet for the court. As it is described in a famous encyclopedia of the Qing era: “[the author] compiled into a single book the rare and unusual delicacies, medicinal soups, poultices, and decoctions he offered, along with the formulas and methods found in the medical works from famous physicians.” [2] This manual for life-engendering dietary practice straddles multiple cultural products, ingredients, economic ties, and ritual cosmologies. Its genesis mirrors the vast empire that it was designed to accommodate: Mongol ancestral food types met Near Eastern ingredients all condensed into Traditional Chinese Medical form. Its prescriptions for the imperial table reveal a world in which food was never merely sustenance but a medium for negotiating health, hierarchy, and cosmology. Later, during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), it was officially promulgated as a compendium of useful culinary insights; the Ming Imperial preface to the text states: “We have examined the entire book Yinshan zhengyao of the former Yuan dynasty…this book is not just an aid for hygiene and nourishing. It is also a great aid for training to receive the correct [way of living].” [3] The culinary and medicinal recipes detailed therein were thus disseminated by imperially sponsored publishing houses from the 14th century and beyond, even into the Qing dynasty. [4]

Among the “Strange Delicacies of Combined Flavours,” the Bal-Po stew, a seemingly modest dish of mutton, chickpeas, and spices, offers a particularly rich case study in the articulation of Mongol Empire culinary cosmology. The chapter features ninety-five courtly recipes, ranging from mutton to camel to wolf; each entry is first described in terms of its medical benefits (relation to qi or organs) before detailing its ingredients. At first glance, Bal-Po stew resembles the Mongol šülen, the mutton broth that, as Buell and Anderson have noted, was believed to contain the “very essence, the soul of the animal.” [5] The broth was achieved by the boiling down of whole animals, usually sheep, for extended periods of time until their collagen thickened the stew and the carcass imparted a strong flavour. In this way, the essence or soul of the sheep, its vital energies, were transposed directly into the broth, thus creating a nourishing meal. It is for this reason that the stew could be said to supplement the individual, balance the qi, or extend the diaphragm; its effects were at once nutritious and medicinal.

From this traditional šülen form, Bal-Po distinguished itself through its inclusion of imported aromatics (saffron, turmeric, and black pepper), Near Eastern ingredients (chickpeas), and ingredients typical of East Asia at the time (radish and cardamom). These ingredients, sourced across the empire from as far as India through Islamic trade networks, marked the stew as a product of the trans-Eurasian circulation that the Mongol empire made possible; they represented a new fusion of food that had never been consumed before on Chinese soil. The result, Buell and Anderson claim when cooking the recipes themselves, is a dish that resembles a curry from the Kashmir: “an excellent dish.” [6]

Of particular interest is the inclusion of chickpeas and radishes. The first, a typically West Asian ingredient, at once accommodates for the many Muslim clients of the Mongol Empire, but also fulfils a curious role as thickening agent. As mentioned above, šülen is generated out of the prolonged boiling of a sheep carcass until a thick broth is produced: chickpeas, however, along with a number of other thickening agents included throughout the cookbook, can expedite that process. In place of the long-standing collagen-based thickening technique, the introduction of the chickpea from West Asia symbolises an evolution of culinary technique: instead of waiting for hours for the broth to thicken, the use of chickpeas (along with ground almonds and mung beans elsewhere) can reproduce the desired texture in minutes. The second, the Chinese radish, had likely come into contact with the Mongol šülen in the past given the occasional assimilation between Mongol and Chinese cultures, but here, instead of being used in dumpling mixtures or in chopped salads, the radish’s inclusion has a more functional role: removing the gamey odour of the stew. As has been accounted for across the materia dietetica of this era, the šülen, although nutritious and of great spiritual significance, tended towards pungency. Thus, with the inclusion of one half-way domestic ingredient and one imported one, a stew could be produced with increased speed and reduced smell.

What appears to be a simple stew, then, actually features a unique set of cultural impulses that could only have come together during the territorial zenith of the greatest land empire in history: from its name, Bal-Po, meaning Nepal, one of the old territories of the Tibetan Empire then under Yuan dynastic control, to the diverse set of ingredients generated through an extensive Muslim trading network, to its textual representation in a Chinese medical framework, to its flavours that could even be considered West Indian, the dish exemplifies the multivalent nature of the Mongol Empire.
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Lewis Ebert is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, specializing in East Asian culinary and ritual cultures. His research focuses on Mongol and Chinese food cosmologies, examining how recipes encoded beliefs about vitality, spirit, and nourishment. Combining archaeological, textual, and anthropological analysis, he explores the intersection of food, ritual, and social life across the Eurasian world.

FURTHER READING

Buell, Paul D and Eugene N Anderson (2013). Soup for the Qan. Milton Park: Routledge.

Hu, Sihui (1994). Yinshan zhengyao sanjuan 飲膳正要三卷. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.

Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 欽定四庫全書總目提要 (1997). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.

NOTES

[1] YSZY 1994, juan 1, 27A. My translation: measurements have been adjusted for broader audience.

[2] Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 欽定四庫全書總目提要 1997, 9026. My translation.

[3] YSZY 1994, 1A

[4] This text is printed and reprinted even up until the modern day, with critical editions being consistently produced at a regular basis. The impact of the text on the Ming is hard to measure but its official promulgation is evidence for an interest and investment into its recipes.

[5] Buell and Anderson 2013, 42.

[6] ibid., 272, footnote.

[7] Bal-Po Stew in the “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Diet,” figure scanned by CADAL from the Peking University Library displayed as part of the Open Source Chinese Text Project.

Sound Recipes: Music as Medicine in Early Modern Goa

By Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi

"The Mount of the Good Shepherd," c. 1650, A.58-1949, Victoria and Albert Museum. Produced by Goan ivory artists, this statue combines Portuguese-Christian and Goan art styles and iconography. Image courtesy of the V&A.
“The Mount of the Good Shepherd,” c. 1650, A.58-1949, Victoria and Albert Museum. Produced by Goan ivory artists, this statue combines Portuguese-Christian and Goan art styles and iconography. Image courtesy of the V&A.

In early modern South Asia, sound worked as a therapeutic agent that crossed textual, ritual, and oceanic worlds. European observers in the Jesuit entrepôt of Goa — one of the most prominent hubs of Catholic missionary activity in India — and household compilers across the Atlantic world translated, adopted, or rejected these sonic practices. This contribution situates “sound recipes” within the logic of the pharmacopeia, according to which a rāga (a melodic framework in Indian classical music associated with specific moods and times) or mantra (a sacred verbal formula believed to have spiritual or healing power) can be dosed, timed, and combined with other substances, such as herbal infusions, perfumed oils, or mineral pastes, much like a drug.[1] Musicological studies on early modern South Asia, roughly spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have linked rāga, time, and rasa (the aesthetic mood or emotional essence evoked in performance) to somatic and emotional states.[2] Building on this insight, this contribution triangulates close readings of three sources: first, Sanskrit medical and musical sources in which mantra, nāda (primordial or resonant sound), and rāga act as therapeutic agents, (e.g., Bhaiṣajya Ratnāvalī and Saṅgīta Parijāta); second, missionary letters and reports from Goa that frame healing as a site of translation; and third, early modern European recipe books in which prayer and chant appear beside simples.

Goa as a contact zone

On the western Indian coast, sixteenth-century Portuguese physicians such as Garcia da Orta and Cristóvão da Costa catalogued Indian materia medica while operating inside a Catholic imperial world.[3] Their dialogues show how Portuguese medicine negotiated local drugs, practices, and authority. Jesuit letters and mission histories from the same context present healing as a privileged site of cultural brokerage. Missionaries learned and sometimes used local therapeutics, staging cures that blended prayer, relics, and vernacular ideas of efficacy.[4] While the Jesuit archive highlights Christian ritual sound, it also attends to Indian bodily techniques and substances, suggesting that mantra-like repetition and Latin prayer were mutually legible within a shared recipe logic. In Jesuit infirmaries and domestic chapels, healing often unfolded as a multisensory practice: prayers were murmured over decoctions, oils were stirred in rhythm with chants, and Latin invocations blended with Sanskrit syllables. The result was a working grammar of healing in which utterance and dose reinforced each other. The ladle, mortar, and pestle set the rhythm, and the voice kept time. What emerged was not a confused hybrid but a practical recipe culture that judged efficacy by repeatable acts, including speech.

Jesuit correspondence from the Estado da Índia — the Portuguese imperial territories in the Indian Ocean, with Goa as their administrative and missionary center — consistently treated healing as a tool of persuasion. Medical care, herbal knowledge, and ritual sound became the means through which missionaries sought to demonstrate the efficacy of Christian devotion and attract converts. The letters sketch a choreography of roles: a lay brother to measure and infuse, a scholar to recite orisons over the sick, and a converted nurse to translate for patients and procure medical ingredients at the market. Prayer did not cancel the dose; it stabilized it. In practice, for example while cooking, repeated Pater Nosters or litanies functioned like a timer, dictating the duration of the simmer, the cooling, and the interval between spoonfuls.[5]

Garcia da Orta’s Colloquies catalogued Indian drugs and the social settings in which they were obtained. Merchants and physicians visited the houses of the sick, kitchen workers were consulted, and patients received decoctions that tasted of cinnamon and clove as much as of missionary hospitality. Orta weighed local testimony, sometimes admitting to a plant’s healing power while omitting information about the ritual words that accompanied its use. His description of Goa’s medical life reads less like a study than a domestic pharmacy staffed by servants and informants who knew that recipes often traveled with words, prayers, and spells attached to them.[6] Cristóvão da Costa’s printed Compendium extended Orta’s list of drugs and diagrams. Its path from Goa’s kitchens to Europe’s presses shows how a cure that began with a whispered invocation could be reduced to a chemical extract or powdered preparation — stripped of its ritual and sonic dimensions —     even as prayer in Goa’s Jesuit college continued to time the stirring of medicines in the infirmary.[7]

Music as medicine

The Jesuits also worked with an acoustic theory of cure. Relics, blessings, and the sign of the cross functioned as spoken technologies. In Goa, missionaries recognized that Indian patients already understood the logic of a spoken remedy. Atharvavedic and Ayurvedic pairings of plant and verse were not exotic outliers but familiar structures with different words. And so, in the mission kitchen, Latin did not replace mantra in the act of dosing so much as stand alongside it . A Konkani-speaking patient might not understand the words or meanings of Latin words but could recognize the pattern: an uttered formula, a breath, and the spoon. Jesuit chroniclers marked successful cures with the language of grace, while local interlocutors could interpret the same cure as the right plant, rightly cooked, with a voice that prepared the body to receive it.[8]

These spaces of missionary healing also served as spaces of translation. At the cauldron, a Jesuit brother preparing remedies learned to name plants as his patients did, adopting local terms and pronunciations so that recipes and treatments could circulate across languages and communities.. He learned timings shaped by coastal winds, monsoon humidity, and fasting calendars. He learned that certain decoctions were best taken at dawn, when the body’s heat and the day’s rāga aligned. Even if the mission did not adopt Indian musicology, it absorbed its clock. The schedule of matins and vespers met local dosing of mornings and evenings. In the Goan kitchen, college bells doubled as timers. The clang that called the community to prayer also told the cook when to lift the pot.[9]

European household  medicine and recipe culture had already prepared missionaries to accept words as curative adjuncts. Early modern recipe books placed psalms and charms beside simples without discomfort. A charm to staunch blood might sit next to a syrup for coughs. The value of these entries lay not in abstract theory but in the report that they had proven efficacy. When Jesuits in Goa encountered Indian sound medicine, they carried this idea with them. It allowed them to absorb counts of recitation or the tying of a thread while a verse was spoken. In the Goan mission kitchen, such actions could be recoded as Christian piety without altering the rhythm the patient’s body was used to feeling.[10] Yet the kitchen could also be erased. When cures moved from the voice-filled room to printed missionary accounts or natural histories, the words were often flattened. Efficacy was attributed to the drug alone, and the context of sound was treated as superstition or allowed to fade.
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Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi is an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Literature at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, India. He earned his Ph.D. in English at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2012. At SMVDU, he teaches courses on applied linguistics and stylistics. His recent work has focused on folk songs, folks tales, and Hindi proverbs.

NOTES

[1] Schofield, K. B. (2023). Music and musicians in late Mughal India. Cambridge University Press. https://assets.cambridge.org/97813165/17857/excerpt/9781316517857_excerpt.pdf;  Jairazbhoy, N. A. (1971). The rags of North Indian music: Their structure and evolution. Lok Virsa Publishing House. https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.26725

[2] Rowell, L. (1992). Music and musical thought in early India. University of Chicago Press; Kaufmann, W. (1968). The ragas of North India. Indiana University Press. Open Library

[3] Orta, G. de. (1563/1913). Colloquies on the simples and drugs of India (C. Markham, Trans.). Internet Archive. https://archive.org; da Costa, C. (1578/1582). Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias orientales. Internet Archive. https://archive.org

[4] Županov, I. G. (1999). Disputed mission: Jesuit experiments and Brahmanical knowledge in seventeenth-century India. Oxford University Press; Wicki, J. (Ed.). (1948–1988). Documenta Indica (Vols. 1–18). Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu. HathiTrust Digital Library

[5] Lea T. Olsan, “Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice,” Social History of Medicine 16, no. 3 (2003): 343–366.

[6] Garcia da Orta, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India (London: Henry Sotheran & Co., 1913), ix–xii, 65–72.

[7] Cristóbal Acosta, Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientales (Burgos: Martín de Victoria, 1578), 1–10, 145–150.

[8] Ines G. Županov, Disputed Mission: Jesuit Experiments and Brahmanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1–20.

[9] Josef Wicki, Documenta Indica, Vol. III, 1553–1557 (Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, 1954), 45–47, 112–118.

[10] Guy L. Beck, Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 1–12, 95–108.

Mixing Rice, Making Self: Chef Edward Lee’s Theory of Bibimbap

By R. Claire Bunschoten & Ben D. Lee

On the Netflix show Culinary Class Wars, Korean American chef Edward Lee makes food to make identity. In the semi-final round of the South Korean cooking competition show, chefs are tasked to create a dish communicating their life story. Signature dishes abound: elaborately crafted songshu guiyu and painstakingly refined pasta vongole speak of hard won skill. Lee, however, offers a twist on a Korean classic when he prepares for the judges a “modern-style” bibimbap to communicate his Korean American identity in the form of a deep fried ball of rice reminiscent of arancini, encased in a layer of Ahi tuna, and topped with caviar. The result of his efforts are mixed.

Bibimbap, which literally translates to mixed rice, is a humble yet prominent mainstay of Korean cuisine dating back at least to the sixteenth century. Comprised of a bowl of warm white rice topped with an artful arrangement of vegetables (namul), some beef, and often an egg yolk, all is then mixed together by the diner with a condiment of gochujang (fermented red pepper paste) or soy sauce to one’s own taste before eating. Scholars of Korean foodways such as Hae-kyung Chung note that bibimbap has “a distinctive flavor that combines ingredients to create new flavors while allowing those ingredients to stay true to their core.” In this way, bibimbap is a dish of transformation; although bibimbap’s ingredients are discrete at the start, the mixing at the heart of its name (bibim from the verb bibida, “to mix”) produces a unified dish.1

A bowl of bibimbap. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Chef Edward Lee’s creation plays with bibimbap’s essence: its mixedness. Lee reconceptualizes the bibim at the center of his bibimbap both materially and rhetorically. Perhaps most obviously, his interpretation of bibimbap has the dish take a new shape which does not require mixing. The judges, when first presented with Lee’s bibimbap, ask if the dish must be mixed before eating. “No,” Lee responds, “Just cut into it.” Skeptical, judge chef Anh Sung-jae wonders aloud: “비빔이 없으면 비빔밥이 아니지 않나요? If there’s no bibim it’s not bibimbap, right?” In doing so, Anh identifies the key tension of Lee’s interpretation; Koreans understand the bibim of bibimbap in its verb form where mixing is a process, Lee however seems to understand bibim as a mixed state of being. In a later interview Anh explains that he disagrees with Lee’s interpretation of bibimbap because it “misrepresents what that iconic Korean dish actually is.” Indeed, as Mun et al concur, “Bibimbap is a food that is eaten by mixing bap, namul, and jang in one bowl.” To require a knife and fork to cut into bibimbap is antithetical to Korean convention. Yet Lee’s liberty with bibim and understanding it as an equivalent to the U.S. English usage of “mixed” extends to the chef’s narrativization of this dish as key to his identity.2

With the dish set in front of the judges, Lee explains: “저는 비빔인간 입니다. I am a bibimingan.” Drawing on the bibim of bibimbap and ingan meaning person, Lee appends the two concepts to assert that he is a mixed person. As he continues to describe his struggles with his identity to the judges–”Am I American? Am I Korean?”–he turns to bibimbap as emblematic of his experience. “Bibimbap at first sight has many different colors and ingredients, but they’re all mixed to create one unique flavor.” Lee casts his culinary training, experiences in the United States, and Korean heritage as the ingredients of his life, seemingly disparate and distinct yet all critical to his sense of self. He continues in English, “When I look at bibimbap, I see myself. It kind of reflects my life and identity as a Korean American person. I am bibimbap.” 

By reinterpreting a dish with Korean roots with aspects of his multi-cultural upbringing and culinary training, Lee crafts his identity through his take on bibimbap. While this narrativization of the dish for the television program presents bibimbap as a reflection of Lee’s identity, making food (as a chef or otherwise) draws on the breadth of Lee’s creativity and embodied knowledge. Bibimbap as a food, as cultural code, becomes a means of materially making identity. After all, Edward Lee is not bibimbap. Although bibimbap allows Lee to materially and rhetorically articulate his experience of the Korean diaspora, people are not food. Yet, Lee is not alone in using food as a metaphor for racial and ethnic identity. 

Food is often used to mark racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. In English specifically, these food metaphors also often transmit and perpetuate racist attitudes.3 Food metaphors might be applied to individuals or groups–e.g. “banana” to discuss East Asians who act “white”–but also to describe processes of immigration and assimilation more broadly as in the much critiqued metaphors of the (fondue) melting pot, salad bowl, and stew.4 This latter type of metaphor to describe immigrant and multicultural relations persists beyond the U.S. and Anglophonic world. For example, some South Koreans turn to bibimbap and jjamppong (a “spicy mixed-up seafood noodle soup,” with origins in Chinese foodways) as metaphors for mixing multiple ideas and objects. While both dishes communicate ideas of mixing, jjamppong denotes a seemingly indiscriminate mix of different kinds of ingredients into one dish whereas bibimbap emphasizes an intentional process of bringing disparate concepts together.5

That said, it is worth noting that Edward Lee’s use of bibimbap differs from these food metaphors. Lee’s assertion of “I am bibimbap” does not make generalizations about groups or attempt to tidily reconcile multicultural relations, but honors Lee’s own lived experience and expression of his bibim identity through his making of bibimbap. Although the bibimbap metaphor may not have been received positively on a universal level by the show’s judges, Lee offers a refreshing approach for thinking about Korean diasporic subjectivities and their broader position in society as cross-cultural mediators. As a Korean American man born and raised in New York City who received training in the world’s cuisines, and embraces the regional influences of Washington D.C. and Louisville, Kentucky where he lives, there appears a capaciousness in the material and symbolic affordances of bibimbap. That is, even as Lee takes cheffy license to stray from traditional definitions of bibimbap, his interpretation of this dish remains a celebration of mixedness. And, arguably, Lee’s bibimbap and concept of bibimingan demonstrates the way this chef uses food to make sense of his subjectivity, both ideologically and on the plate. Mixing, as a culinary instruction so key to bibimbap, is made into a way of being.  


R. Claire Bunschoten studies food and its relations to power. Her work often grapples with food’s material-semiotic and sensorial qualities as they relate to concepts of identity in the twentieth century United States. She is at work on her first book project which investigates vanilla as a flavor, fragrance, and racial signifier in the United States. She holds a PhD and MA in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA from Bard College. Her writing has appeared in Food and Foodways, Aeon, Social Text, and more. 

Ben D. Lee was raised in Christchurch, New Zealand as a 1.5-generation Korean New Zealander, whose studies took him to Australia and the United States. He is a medical anthropologist with a PhD in Occupational Therapy, embodying bibimingan in an academic context. Ben studied the lived sensory experiences of people living with schizophrenia and left academia in May 2025 for a career in consulting.


  1. Hae Kyung Chung, “The Meaning and Symbolism of Korean Food Culture,” Asia Review 5, no. 1 (2015): 97-121. (in Korean, translation by B.D. Lee) ↩︎
  2. Eun-Gyung Mun, Young-Eun Lee, and Youn-Soo Cha, “The Globalization of Bibimbap: Focusing on the Diversity of Modernization of Bibimbap,” Journal of Ethnic Foods 10, no. 1 (November 1, 2023): 39. ↩︎
  3. Irene López-Rodríguez, “Are We What We Eat? Food Metaphors in the Conceptualization of Ethnic Groups,” Linguistik Online 69, no. 7 (September 26, 2014). ↩︎
  4. Xaviera (Mei Mei) Xiao, “Ingredients of Discourse: Analyzing the Language of Food in Discourses of Multiculturalism,” Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7, no. 2 (2017): 1–9. ↩︎
  5. As some food metaphors mark racial difference and inferiority in the U.S., there are some potential negative connotations in jjamppong’s characterization as an indiscriminate mix especially considering its origins in China. We look forward to scholars exploring this further in work on Korean food metaphors. ↩︎

“Recetario Soberano”: Defending Sovereignty One Recipe at a Time

By Ángel Tuninetti and the Centro de Estudios Heñói Team

Paraguay is a poster case for the damage that industrial agriculture can cause on food security and food sovereignty. The landlocked South American country was almost self-sufficient in food production until the 1990s, mainly thanks to the diversified crops and animal production of the fincas campesinas [small peasant farms]. 

Then, in 1996, GMO soybeans were introduced, and with them, an industrial agricultural model aimed at the production of commodities, followed later by other GMO crops, such as corn, rice, and wheat.  Now the country depends on the import of vegetables and fruits, since 95% of the cultivated lands are dedicated to genetically modified crops for export. This production involves the use of 60 million liters of pesticides per year (10 liters per inhabitant), and is defended by mercenaries, the police, the army and the judicial apparatus. This is a war for the future of Paraguayan people and their right to food sovereignty.

To defend the right of the Paraguayan people to their food sovereignty and their culture, the Centro de Estudios Heñói, a small NGO based in Asuncion, produces and publishes its Recetario Soberano. It consists in collecting and rescuing traditional peasant and indigenous recipes kept alive and transmitted from generation to generation, but that are not part of the typical Paraguayan fare that you will find in recipe books and traditional restaurants.

How are traditional indigenous and peasant recipes rescued?

Through a process in which we seek to understand the cultural significance of recipes, linking them to their roots, memories, and their socioeconomic, political, and symbolic history for the communities.

The process of recovering traditional recipes starts with interviews with Indigenous and peasant leaders to capture their stories and memories, recording them through audiovisual media, and capturing the recipe preparation in their environment, as a communal event. The communities have embraced the project, and their leaders recognize the importance of their culinary traditions, such as the ingredients from the Chaco region, often not included in the “official” Paraguayan gastronomy. As Ana Romero, a young leader from the Kemha Yat Sepo, of the Enxet People,  said, “in the Chaco, the indigenous food traditions of the peoples continue to be practiced, but we are a diversity of peoples, territories, and foods. In the Alto Chaco, we do have similarities in our food system; we are based on tuna, algarroba, mistol, and chili peppers.”

Ramón Medina, a leader from Kamba Kua, Pilar, emphasized the importance of community: “It is important to preserve not only the traditional food or recipes of Paraguay. But also, the entire history of community building, solidarity, sharing, inviting one another, the grand gesture of inviting one another. People liked and were happy to invite and be invited by others”.

Image Credit: Heñói.

Food sovereignty is intrinsically tied to land rights. As Mario Rivarola, the leader of the Mby’a community of Hugua Po’i, Caaguazú, pointed out, “to recover these typical foods of the Mbyá peoples, we need to recover the land to recover the Mby’a traditions and culture. That is the responsibility of the State, to comply with and enforce the national and international regulations that guarantee access to our ancestral territories”.

The first two recipes rescued

Chipa Manduvi

Image credit: Heñói

Ingredients: Corn flour, roasted and ground peanuts, cassava starch, milk, salt.

Preparation: Mix the corn flour, ground peanuts, and cassava starch in a large bowl. Add the salt and mix well. Add the milk little by little, kneading until you get a smooth, even dough. The amount of milk may vary, so add it gradually until the dough has the right consistency. Form the chipas and place them in a baking dish on banana leaves. Bake in a tatakúa (traditional brick oven) or preheated oven.

 

Ka’i Ku’a

Ingredients: Corn with husks, fresh Paraguay cheese, pork lard, milk

Image credit: Heñói

Preparation: Remove the husks from the corn, wash, and set aside. Remove the kernels from the corn and ground with a mill. Mix the ground corn with the Paraguay cheese, pork lard, and salt until you get a smooth dough. Pour the mixture into each husk, close it, and tie it at the ends and in the middle, forming the characteristic “monkey waist.” Place the husks in a pot with enough water. Let it boil for about 30 minutes. Remove and serve.

Image credit: Heñói

Why work to recover these recipes?

First, because we are aware of the problems of food on a national and global scale. These include the loss of food sovereignty, understood as the human right and self-determination of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food, as declared by La Vía Campesina. Peasant and indigenous communities have the right to eat what they want and have eaten traditionally, but the current food production system is dismantling their capacities for resistance because of the destruction of biocultural corridors, due to the relentless advance of agricultural, livestock, and forestry extractivism on their lands and territories. Inadequate nutrition has also meant increased deaths from chronic non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

Secondly, because we want to question what is Paraguayan gastronomy. In local literature, what is generally referred as “Paraguayan cuisine or gastronomy,” includes recipes that are assumed to be traditional without questioning the colonial heritage they often possess. This general idea of ​​Paraguayan gastronomy recipes is separated from the productive and creative labor behind the raw materials, the utensils, the culinary recipe itself, and the significance that all of these have for the organization and structuring of Indigenous and peasant communities. In other words, vorí vorí, sopa paraguaya, locro, and jopara, understood to be the intangible cultural heritage of Paraguay, could not exist without the productive Indigenous and peasant labor behind them. The  “typical Paraguayan fare” you would find at a traditional restaurant or food fair often excludes the diversity and richness of the culinary art developed in different Indigenous and peasant territories.

Our approach recovers the meaning that Indigenous and peasant communities give to food, to specific recipes, and to their relationship with nature, culture, society, the economy, and the power relations that permeate the ways in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed. 

Image credit: Heñói

In a country ravaged by extractivism, preserving and promoting ancestral cooking is an imperative to save traditional cultures and promote community building.