Our comfortable stay in Asuncion couchsurfing - I

Eduardo’s house is in a middle class community; a few blocks away is a luxurious community of double price. We stay in his son’s room for 3 days. It was a comfortable place. Better is that the kitchen is big where we made a good chinese meal on a Friday party. He invited friends and also a professional singer and guitarist. He sang local Paraguay and Guarani songs and gave us a great night. As for our cooking, it was an adventure for the whole process. Eduardo took us to a Chinese food store where we bought bean curd, sha cha (sand and tea) sauce, frozen dumplings, rice vermicelli, black beans, sesame sauce, frozen shrimp (Maria’s idea to make shrimp in sweet and sour sauce) and very yummy freshly made spicy bamboo soot. The shop was opened by Taiwanese and we had some chat with the shopkeeper. At 7pm we were still buying ribs, chicken wings, beef strips, chicken heart, liver and kidney and vegetable in the supermarket. We started cooking at 8pm. As people were coming we made quick appetizers: fried dumplings, cold noodle in sesame sauce, bean curd in sesame sauce and bamboo soots. The guests seem to like the dumplings more than the other three. Then we made Shanghainese style sweet and sour ribs, chicken wing in Sha-cha sauce, shrimp in sweet and sour sauce and fried rice.

The pork was finished in 5 minutes, but there was leftover for cold noodles and bean curd. We can only blame for the bean curd which was for fried but not for cold eating. Anyway, all were satisfied and we still haven’t made the black bean beef fried rice vermicelli. We drank a lot of beer and wine and party till 4am.

Later we also learnt to make empanadas from Eduardo’s mother Margarita. Speaking good English, she was a very talented woman that we both liked her a lot. If only we could stay longer that we could learn a lot of Paraguay cuisine.