Snack · Cassava Griddle Cake

Mbeju

Photo: Pelufi / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

It's a pancake made almost entirely from tree-root starch, with no wheat flour at all, yet it holds together in a crisp, lacy disc.

Mbeju is a golden, crumbly griddle cake made from almidón (cassava starch) mixed with cheese, egg, and a little milk or lard, then cooked on a hot flat pan until it sets into a lacy, semi-crisp disc. A staple breakfast and afternoon snack across Paraguay, sold hot off griddles at markets and roadside stalls alongside mate or tereré.

Why it's made this way: The dish descends from Indigenous Guaraní use of cassava as a starch staple long before wheat arrived with European colonization, with the cheese reflecting later Jesuit-era dairy farming in the region.