The Venezuelan Bollito - A Boiled Cornflour Snack

For a typical Venezuelan breakfast, when you are short of time, try boiling your cornflour dough instead of making arepas. The resulting submarine-shaped "bollos" are ready in just 15 minutes. (photo copyright Russell Maddicks)

That white submarine at the back of the plate is a bollo (pronounced: bo-jyo), also known as a bollito (pronounced: bo-jyito).
They are made from the same dough used to make arepas, from pre-cooked corn flour.
Like many Venezuelans I use Harina Pan to make my arepas and bollos.
All you need to do is add water and knead the dough until you can shape it easily and it isn't too dry to form cracks.
Instead of forming the dough into flying saucer shapes and frying or baking your arepas, bollos are roughly shaped into submarines and boiled in water for about 15 minutes. You know they are ready when they float to the surface.
It's a really quick way to get your daily cornbread fix.
For breakfast I like to serve bollitos with perico (eggs scrambled with onions and tomatoes) and grated yellow cheese.
In some places in Venezuela, you find bollo pelon, which are bollos stuffed with minced beef or shredded chicken cooked in a sauce.
In Colombia, the bollo limpio is slightly different as the corn dough submarines are wrapped in a corn husk before being boiled.
In Venezuela this kind of bollo is called an hallaquita.
Just to confuse matters further, in Ecuador and some other Andean countries, there is a very similar corn dish called humita. These are typically made from fresh ground corn which is wrapped in corn husks and steamed, often with cheese mixed into the dough.
The ultimate bollo is the hallaca, a cornmeal-dough pocket stuffed with a host of tasty ingredients, wrapped in a plantain leaf, which is eaten at Christmas.

Related recipes:
How to Make Arepas
How to Make Perico
How to Make Hallacas 

#Venezuelan #food #bollos #hallaquitas #arepas

Venezuelan Gastronomic Fair - London, 9 March

Venezuelan food lovers should make some room for a big blowout and head down to the Irish Centre in Hammersmith on Saturday, 9 March, because the organizers of the annual Christmas Bazaar have decided to hold another massive food fair.

From noon to 6pm a variety of stalls will be selling a range of Venezuelan traditional food, from snacks like arepas and empanadas to full-on feasts of pabellon criollo, pernil (pork), asado negro (beef cooked with cane sugar until black), served with rice, fried plantains and caraotas negras (black beans).

There will be food, music and raffles for all the family, a bouncy castle and face painting for the kids, and Venezuelan-style cocktails like guarapita (passionfruit and rum) for the adults.

Stallholder Luisa Chavez, a Venezuelan who lives in London and is rightly famous for her quesillo (creme caramel) and torta de tres leches (ridiculously delicious cake), will also be bringing homemade Venezuelan queso duro blanco (hard, white cheese) to the event.

Other stallholders include Mi Cocina es Tuya and the folks from Arepa & Co, who Venezuelan food-addicts will already know from their very successful weekend stall at Camden Lock Market.

The Irish Centre is in Blacks Road, Hammersmith (W6 9TD), close to two Tube stations - the Hammersmith and City Line station and the Picadilly and Central Line station.

How to Order Arepas - A Glossary

Arepas are Venezuela's homegrown alternative to bread or rolls, cornmeal "cakes" about the size of a hockey puck that are crunchy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside.

Infinitely versatile, they can be eaten solo with butter or opened up and stuffed with a variety of fillings to make a delicious snack.

While most Venezuelans will eat arepas at home, if you want something more exotic - to quell your lunchtime hunger pangs or soak up the alcohol after a night on the tiles - then head to an arepera, Venezuela's very own fast-food joints.

First-timers will probably go for a simple option like ham or cheese, but if you want to try something more ambitious here is a brief glossary to help you negotiate the more head-scratching menu items at a typical arepera.

Arepa - Cooked cornmeal pocket stuffed with various ingredients.
Arepitas - Small fried arepas served as a starter to eat with nata (sour cream), or with soups and stews.
Arepa de Trigo - Large arepa from the Andes region made from wheat.

Fillings:
Aguacate - Avocado
Aguita 'e Sapo - Literally "Frog Water", but don't let the name put you off. This is just pernil (roast pork) in its juice, served with fried cheese. Found almost exclusively in Maracaibo.
Atun - Tuna salad with onions and a squeeze of lemon
Caraotas negras - Black beans
Carne mechada - Shredded beef
Chicharron - Pork crackling, also known in UK as pork scratchings
Chorizo - Spicy sausage
Diablitos - Devilled ham
Domino - Black beans and grated white cheese
Ensalada de Gallina - Chicken salad
Jamon - Ham
Montaña Rusa - Quail's eggs in mayonnaise (literally Russian Mountain, the term for a rollercoaster ride in Venezuela)
Morcilla - Black pudding
Orejas de Cochino - Snippets of pigs' ears in sauce
Pata-pata - Black beans, yellow cheese and avocado
Pelua - Shredded beef and grated yellow cheese
Perico - Scrambled eggs cooked with chopped tomato and onion
Pernil - Roast pork
Pollo guisado - Chicken cooked in a sauce
Popurri Criolla - Shredded beef, black beans and white cheese
Queso - Cheese
Queso de mano - Literally "hand cheese", a traditionally-made soft white country cheese
Queso Guayanes - Another soft white cheese
Reina Pepiada - Chicken, avocado, mayonnaise and peas

Sauces:
Guasacaca - Avocado sauce similiar to Mexican Guacamole but not as thick. Great for drizzling over arepas or empanadas. Every arepera has their own recipe.
Salsa picante - Hot sauce. Again, every place has its own recipe, so test to see if you can deal with the heat before drenching your food.

Copyright Russell Maddicks

Arepa - Carne mechada con queso blanco

Venezuelan food now on sale in Southampton

Hot and tasty Venezuelan snacks are now available in Southampton on Saturdays, after Yasmily Barrios Teran decided to open a stall selling traditional food from her native Venezuela at the seaside city's popular Bargate Market.

Teran, originally from Maracay, only started selling Venezuelan empanadas (fried cornmeal turnovers with savoury fillings) and arepas one month ago.

The empanadas on sale include plain cheese, cheese and plantain, "domino" (cheese and black beans), shredded beef, minced beef, fish, and the very filling "pabellon" (shredded beef, plantain, rice and black beans).

For those with a sweet tooth, she also sells churros con chocolate, a traditional Spanish combination of piped donut mix that is deep fried, sprinkled with sugar or cinnamon, and served with hot chocolate. A great way to keep out the cold on a chilly day.

The response from her British customers has been so positive that she now plans to continue with the stall until Christmas.

"I didn't know what to expect from the local people. There are no other Venezuelan food stalls here, Venezuelan food is not well known and they haven't tried empanadas before. But they love them, especially the domino - filled with cheese and black beans - which really surprised me," she says.

On her stall, Teran stresses the health benefits of arepas and empanadas, which are made with cornmeal flour and are wheat and gluten-free (perfect for coeliac sufferers).

She uses halal meat so the local Asian population can tuck in too.

For an authentic Venezuelan empanada experience, be sure to spoon on the homemade sauces - a smooth guasacaca (wah-sa-kaka), made with avocadoes, and a fiery picante.

Now she's established, Teran hopes the word will spread and more people will seek out her Venezuelan snacks, especially Venezuelans living in the South of England.

If you want to taste Yasmily Barrios Teran's empanadas visit Bargate Market in Southampton from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. any Saturday.

The history of the Venezuela arepa (documentary in Spanish)

This excellent documentary by the Universidad Monteávila in Caracas charts the history of the humble Venezuelan arepa - a local maize-flour alternative to the bread roll - from its indigenous origins to today.

Experts in Venezuela's food history and gastronomic traditions discuss the boom in arepa bars, called areperas, that occurred in the 1950s with the arrival of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese immigrants fleeing the post-war poverty of Europe for a new life in the sun.

The first filled arepas were called tostadas and a host of breakfast and lunch bars specializing in quick snacks for workers and schoolkids sprung up around the country to sell them.

But the arepa boom really took off with the arrival of pre-cooked maize flour in the 1960s, such as the ever popular Harina P.A.N., which drastically cut the preparation time for arepa dough and turned areperas into the ultimate fast-food outlets.

The queen of arepa fillings must be the Reina Pepiada, a gooey concoction of shredded chicken, avocado and mayonnaise. The documentary tells the story of how this emblematic dish came to be named after Venezuela's first international beauty queen, the exquisite Susana Dujim who in 1955 was crowned Miss World in London.

Here's a menu of arepa fillings - with translations - for anybody wanting to try one of these delicious Venezuelan snacks.

Related posts:
Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Buying Harina Pan in the UK

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in London

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making Arepas the Hard Way

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

A Glossary of Arepas

Venezuelan Food in San Francisco - Pica Pica Maize Kitchen

If you're in San Francisco and you feel like savouring the authentic flavours of Venezuela, check out the Pica Pica Maize Kitchen run by Adriana Lopez and her father Leopoldo Lopez Gil.

The menu focuses on tasty Venezuelan street food, such as empanadas, cachapas and the the maize buns known as arepas, which are stuffed with a variety of fillings, from traditional shredded beef and plantains to devilled ham (Diablitos).

They even have some more exotic fusion food, like the tofu-filled arepa they call the Vegetariana.

Pica Pica currently have two outlets, one at 401 Valencia Street, San Francisco, and another at Oxbow market in Napa.

For full details see the Pica Pica website.

Recipe: Cachapas - Tasty Venezuelan corn pancakes

Cachapas are thick, tasty pancakes made from maize (sweetcorn) and served with a slab of white cheese at street stalls all over Venezuela.

The usual way to make them is to grind the maize kernels through a special machine, which gives the cachapa mixture just the right consistency, and then cook them on a flat griddle plate.

Anybody living outside Venezuela should try this easy to follow recipe by Jorge Franca, which adds an egg and plain flour to the maize and cleverly replaces queso de mano (a soft white Venezuelan cheese) with Mozarella.

Cachapas are an integral part of Venezuela's culinary history and their origin dates back to pre-Colombian times, when the indigenous population would grind corn with stone pestles and then cook it cachapa-style on clay budares, flat griddle plates that have been found in archaeological digs at many sites in Venezuela.

This sweet and savoury treat is best served with cheese, either a white cheese like Mozarrella or even a grated yellow cheese like cheddar.

The most exotic cachapa I've ever had was at a tiny roadside stall with a tin-roof in the Gran Sabana. The owner was selling "cachapa con cochino" and the steaming maize cachapas were topped with lashings of margarine, a thick slab of cheese, a pork chop and some chicharron, or fried pork rinds. Washed down with a cold Polarcita, it was like cachapa heaven.

Venezuelan cacao back on TV as Willie "Raises the Bar"

Venezuelan chocolate sales in the UK are expected to get a boost after funky new logos were unveiled recently for William "Willie" Harcourt-Cooze's 100 per cent cacao products. The launch coincides with a new three-part Channel 4 series called "Raising the Bar: Willie's Chocolate Revolution" and his brand new chocolate bars, which will be sold initially in Selfridges from 1 April.

It's all about Willie now.

The dogs that featured on the old wrappers for Willie's "Venezuelan Black" criollo cacao have been replaced by the logo "Willie's Supreme Cacao" in day-glo colours that tie in with the playful spirit of the Channel 4 documentary that helped launch the products in the first place: "Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory".

There is also added emphasis on explaining how to use the product.

The labels carry the slogans "Grate in food" and "Great on food", urging consumers to experiment as Willie does by throwing a little cacao into their cooking as they might an expensive herb or spice.

The contents of the three bars remain the same: Hacienda El Tesoro is made from cocoa beans from Willie's cocoa plantation near the beach resort of Choroni, while Rio Caribe Superior and Carenero Superior are single-estate beans sourced by Willie from other haciendas.

The beans are imported directly from Venezuela and processed in Willie's chocolate factory in Tiverton, Devon.

The rebranding and repackaging designs were created by Bristol-based Taxi Studio, who have already won several awards for the designs.

As well as "Willie's Supreme Cacao" there are logos for "Willie's World Class Cacao", "Willie's Rambunctious Cacao" and "Willie's Delectable Cacao", suggesting the success of the products has injected a greater confidence in the marketing.

Willie has certainly done well, the 100 per cent cacao bars are modelled on the traditional cylinders of home-made cocoa sold from people's homes or small shops in Venezuela's cacao-producing areas as a source of extra income. In Venezuela, these are simply grated into milk and used to make hot chocolate.

By focusing on the prime quality of the cocoa beans and marketing his "Venezuelan Black" bars as a gourmet cooking ingredient, Willie has effectively introduced a brand new product into the UK market.

Buyers now see "cacao" as something separate from cocoa, and that's all down to Willie.

So it was no surprise to learn that he picked up the 2008 "Chocolate Personality of the Year" award at the Academy of Chocolate's annual prizegiving ceremony, which must have been sweet.

Willie's new Channel 4 documentary series will be shown on 7 April, 8 April and 9 April and follows the wonky entrepreneur as he produces his first real sweetened chocolate bars: the Rio Caribe Superior chocolate bar, which is 70 per cent Venezuelan cacao, and a 72 per cent Peruvian San Martin chocolate bar.

The blurb that accompanies the series makes it sound like Willie faces some stiff challenges, but there'd be no point watching otherwise:

"Will Willie get the funding and new equipment necessary to produce his new bar; can he persuade retailers to stock it; and will the public change their tastes? Can one individual, no matter how passionate, really hope to take on the chocolate giants and win?"

Well it seems he can. Priced at £3.49, the bars will go on sale at Selfridges on Oxford Street on Thursday, 2 April and interest in the launch is huge.

Already more than 1,500 people are on a waiting list for the first 3,000 bars.

Selfridges food and restaurants director, Ewan Venters, told reporters that the store has set up a new customer phone line to cope with the expected flood of orders and manage the waiting list.

"Willie's two bars will be a huge hit. This time last year his bars, which require customers to cook with them, became our food hall's fastest-selling line," he said.

Expect mayhem then when Willie visits the Selfridges food hall from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, 18 April, to sign copies of his new book "Willie's Chocolate Factory Cookbook."

The book combines recipes that use his cacao bars with the story of how he and his wife Tania bought a remote hacienda in Venezuela and started the journey that has brought him back to the UK as a famous TV star and "the nation’s most-loved chocolate chef" as Selfridges calls him.

Willie is also working on a hot cocoa drink called "Get-Up & Gocoa", which he told Waitrose's Food Illustrated magazine "will be as close to Aztec cocoa as you can get."

"The conquistador Hernan Cortes said: 'An army can march all day on one glass of chocolate'. It wasn’t until hundreds of years later that it was made into bars. I’m taking chocolate back to its roots," Willie added.

The word cacao was taken by the Spanish from the Aztec word "cacahuatl" but Aztec cocoa was very different from the hot, sweet beverage we enjoy today and was usually served frothy, cold and laced with crushed chili peppers.

Now, if Willie can get my old mum to sip an Aztec cocoa while curling up on the sofa watching his new series he really will have raised the bar.


Click here to see Willie's new Chocolate Factory Cookbook






"Venezuelan Black" is currently available in selected Waitrose supermarkets and Selfridges store in London. The website williescacao.com is currently under construction.

Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory brings Venezuelan cacao to UK

Chuao: In Search of World's Finest Cocoa Beans

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

La Reina Pepiada - The Curvy Queen of Arepas

The "Reina Pepiada" is one of the most popular arepa dishes in Venezuela: a lip-smacking combination of shredded chicken, mayonnaise and petit pois stuffed into a grilled cornmeal arepa with slices of soft avocado.

Like the doner kebab in Britain, the Reina Pepiada - or Reina Pepeada in some places - is a firm favourite with drinkers and ravers who flock to late night areperas after the bars and clubs shut to soak up the alcohol with a "Reina" or two, preferably drizzled with spicy hot sauce.

But even after fifty years at the top of the arepa food chain few people know that this local delicacy is named after Venezuela's first international beauty queen Susana Dujim.

A stunning morena with jet black hair and a smile that could light up a city, Dujim was crowned Miss World in London in 1955, becoming the first South American to ever hold the title.

Venezuelans all over the country were immensely proud of her achievement but none more than the Alvarez brothers from Trujillo State who had recently opened an arepera on Gran Avenida between Plaza Venezuela and Sabana Grande in the capital Caracas.

That was back in the days when stuffed arepas were called "tostadas".

Heriberto Alvarez, now 83, said that in order to pay homage to Susana Dujim's amazing achievement the brothers decided to dress up their 12-year-old niece as a beauty queen and sat her on a kind of altar so she could be seen from the street.

"A man passed and asked us why we had this girl here," Heriberto told food writer Alberto Veloz.

Much to Heriberto's surprise, the man turned out to be Susana Dujim's father. He was so pleased with their tribute to his daughter that he brought her to see them the next Friday.

"I gave her a tostada and I told her: 'Look, this tostadita was specially prepared by my mother and its going to be called La Reina, just like you,'" said Heriberto.

"And because in those days curvaceous women like Susana were called 'pepiadas', we gave that name to the arepa," he adds.

So there you have it. The origin of the "Reina Pepiada" or the "Curvy Queen" - named after a true Venezuelan beauty, Susana Dujim, Miss World 1955.

A Glossary of Arepas

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Buying Harina Pan in the UK

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making Arepas the Hard Way

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making arepas the hard way

Edelmira Jimenez from Cojedes State makes her arepas the old-fashioned way by pounding shucked maize kernels in a large wooden mortar called a pilon.

The pilon is believed to have been brought to Venezuela from Africa with the slaves who worked the sugar, cacao and coffee plantations. Before that, the indigenous tribes of Venezuela used stone metates for grinding their maize, similar to the ones still used in Central America and Mexico.

Working with her son, it takes Edelmira half an hour to pound the maize, before collecting it in a pan and washing it to remove the hard husks.

She then boils the maize, drains off the water, and puts it through the grinder.

Finally, she makes the resulting dough into arepas which she cooks on a flat griddle.

Seeing how much work is involved in making arepas this way, it's easy to see why pre-cooked maize flour like Harina P.A.N. took off when it was introduced in 1960 by Empresas Polar.

The original slogan for the labour-saving instant dough mix was: "Se acabó la piladera!" ("No more pounding!")

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Buying Harina Pan in the UK

La Reina Pepiada: The Curvy Queen of Arepas

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Shredded beef is a key dish in Latin American cooking, from Cuba's rather unappetizingly named but utterly delicious "ropa vieja" ("old clothes") to Venezuela's national dish Pabellon Criollo, where the beef is typically accompanied by white rice, black beans and slices of fried plantain.

It is also used as a filling for empanadas and arepas.

The name shredded or pulled beef comes from the long strands you get when you pull the boiled meat apart.

In Spanish mechar or desmechar mean literally to separate hair into strands or to pull your hair out in fury.

Hopefully, this recipe is simple enough to avoid any hair pulling and tasty enough to justify the time it takes to boil, shred and fry the meat.

The secret to this dish is in the beef and the best cut to buy is skirt - known as flank in the USA - which will give you the right kind of strands.

I usually boil and shred the beef the day before I make my carne mechada and then leave it overnight in the fridge.

Shredding is easy and can be done with a knife, or two forks or your hands, whatever you find easiest.

The strands do not have to be uniform in size and you can experiment with different thicknesses of strands until you get the consistency you want.

Make sure you keep the water used to boil the meat as it will add extra flavour to the final sauce, which is made in typical Venezuelan style, with a sofrito of onions, bell peppers and garlic that the meat and tomatoes are then added to.

If you are serving as a meal with rice and beans the final simmer should leave some liquid in the sauce but if you want to fill empanadas with your carne mechada, boil until it is nearly dry, stirring regularly to avoid sticking or burning.


Ingredients
For enough carne mechada to serve 4 people you will need:
Half a kilo of beef skirt
1 small onion
Half a red pepper
3 cloves of garlic
Worcestershire sauce (salsa inglesa)
Salt
Black pepper
A pinch of cumin
Two spoons of tomato puree
Olive oil

Preparation

Boil the Beef

1. Place the beef in a large saucepan with enough water to cover it.

2. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 2 hours.

3. Remove from heat and leave to cool.

4. Set aside the water.

5. Shred the beef into strands with a knife or two forks until all the beef is shredded.

Make the Sofrito

6. Chop and dice the onion and bell pepper.

7. Crush garlic in pestle and mortar or in garlic crusher.

8. Heat two spoons of olive oil in a large frying pan.

9. Add onions and when they start to brown add the garlic and the bell peppers, a pinch of salt, some black pepper and a pinch of cumin.

10. Add the shredded beef and stir, allow to brown a little.

11. Add some of the water the beef was boiled in, tomato puree and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

12. Stir frequently as you bring to the boil and then lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

13. Serve with rice and beans.

Buen provecho! as they say in Venezuela. Enjoy your meal.

By Russell Maddicks

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: How to make Cachapas - Venezuelan corn pancakes

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Recipe: Perico - Venezuelan Scrambled Eggs

You don't get plain old scrambled eggs in Venezuela. As befits a vibrant tropical country where eating great-tasting food is an intrinsic part of the culture, you get something far more exciting and colourful: Perico.

The name of the dish comes from the Spanish word for parrot, probably because the red, yellow and green of the ingredients echoes the parrot's colourful plumage. Interestingly, perico is also a slang term for cocaine (perhaps because users of the drug tend to prattle on so much about nothing in particular).

But whatever you get up to on Saturday night, perico is a fast, simple way to brighten up brunch on a grey, drizzly Sunday.

In Venezuela it is generally eaten alone with arepas (see recipe below), or in combination with bacon or ham, black beans and grated cheese.

I usually have some hot sauce handy too. Venezuelans generally shy away from incorporating chillies into their cooking but will have homemade picante sauce on the table to give an extra zing to meals.

The best perico I have ever tasted was at a small roadside stall in the wide-open plains of Venezuela's cowboy country known as Los Llanos. It was only about 10:30 in the morning but already the sun was stirring up heat swirls from the asphalt road.

We ate off battered plastic plates at a rickety table under a zinc roof and our breakfast was accompanied by a few ice-cold Polar beers from the cool box.

But what made it so memorable was that the lady serving the food had crushed chicharron - pork scratchings - into the eggs, which took the whole experience to a different level.

I hope you like my more traditional version.

Ingredients
To make perico for two people you will need:
4 eggs
2 medium-sized tomatoes
1 small onion
2 spring onions
A quarter of a green or red bell pepper
Salt
Ground black pepper
Olive oil

Preparation

1. Finely chop the onions, spring onions and bell pepper.

2. Cut the tomatoes up into small squares and remove seeds and excess juice.

3. Heat the olive oil in a medium frying pan.

4. Add the onion and when it starts to brown add spring onions, pepper and tomatoes.

5. Turn down heat and cook for about 6-8 minutes, adding salt and ground black pepper to season.

6. Break eggs into a bowl and whisk until you get bubbles on top.

7. Add eggs to frying pan and stir gently as it cooks and scrambled egg forms.

8. When the scrambled egg is ready, remove from heat and serve.

By Russell Maddicks

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Arepas are cornmeal patties that are eaten in place of bread in Venezuela. They are quick to make, healthy and can be eaten at any time of the day. At breakfast, they can be served steaming hot from the oven with a slather of butter, or filled with cheese, ham or perico, Venezuelan-style scrambled eggs. During the day, they make the perfect snack and are sold in fast-food outlets called areperas, with fillings like grated cheese, black beans, chicken salad and avocado, or shredded beef.

The secret to cooking arepas is Harina P.A.N., the first and most popular brand of pre-cooked maize flour. It was developed by a Venezuelan engineer called Dr Caballero Mejias in 1954 and revolutionized Venezuelan cooking when it was introduced by the beer company Polar in 1960.

Harina P.A.N. makes the whole process of preparing maize dough quick and easy and is a far cry from the traditional method of laboriously soaking, peeling and then pounding corn kernels in a large wooden mortar called a pilon, which is still practised in many parts of Venezuela today.

The original slogan for Harina P.A.N. was "Se acabo la piladera" ("No more pounding").

The great thing about Harina P.A.N. in our health-conscious world is that maize flour is easily digested, contains no additives or bleaching agents and is 100 per cent gluten-free.

It comes in two varieties, yellow or white, and can be used to make arepas, as well as savoury patties called empanadas, and hallacas - a traditional Christmas dish.

Once the maize dough has been prepared and the arepas made into a distinctive flying saucer shape, they can be baked, fried, cooked on a charcoal grill or boiled.

How to Bake Arepas

To make enough dough for six arepas you will need:

Ingredients
2 cups of Harina P.A.N. flour
2 cups of water
A pinch of salt

Preparation

1. Place two cups of flour in a mixing bowl. Add a pinch of salt and mix through with clean dry hands.

2. Measure two cups of warm water and pour onto flour.

3. Knead together the flour and water with your hands until the mixture is thoroughly blended and there are no grainy lumps.

4. If the is too soggy and sticks to your fingers add more flour. If it is too dry add water. The perfect dough should roll easily into a large ball without cracking.

5. Break off a fistful of the dough and roll it into a ball in your hands. Then pat it and turn it in your hands until its about half an inch thick and about 3-4 inches across. It should have the classic flying saucer shape now.

6. Make the rest of the arepas you want to cook. If any dough is left over wrap it in plastic - to keep in the moisture - and place in fridge. It will keep for three to four days.

7. Heat a little oil in a heavy frying pan or griddle and when hot add the arepas, as many as will comfortably fit in the pan. The idea is to give the arepas a crunchy exterior ("una cara", literally a face, as they say in Venezuela) so don't turn the heat up too high. When the arepas are brown on one side turn them over. The whole process should not take longer than 10 minutes.

8. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

9. When arepas have been browned, reduce oven to 200 degrees, place arepas on a baking tray at the top of the oven for 15-20 minutes. When ready they should sound hollow when tapped with a knife.

10. Serve with butter and grated cheese, scrambled eggs, black beans, ham, hot sauce and anything else you want to fill them with. The trick is to make an incision in the arepa - slicing through the middle but not going all the way - and then open it up like a pocket for the filling.

By Russell Maddicks

Buying Harina Pan in the UK

Recipe: How to make Cachapas - Venezuelan corn pancakes


Arepa and Co: Venezuelan arepera in London

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

La Reina Pepiada: The Curvy Queen of Arepas

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making Arepas the Hard Way

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Tasty, cheap and nutritious, black beans are as emblematic of Venezuela as the colours of the flag - and they're good for you.

And while other Latin American countries might refer to their beans as frijoles, porotos, judias or habichuelas, in Venezuela they are always caraotas.

In England they are often sold as Turtle Beans, a name which comes from the Caribbean and is said to be inspired by their hard shiny shells.

They can be served as a soup, as a side order with a main meal, or refried and used as filling for empanadas and arepas.

They are also the only ingredient in the national dish Pabellon Criollo that is truly indigenous to the Americas, because rice is originally from India, plantains were brought to Venezuela from Africa and the beef comes from European cows.

But you don't need to stick to Venezuelan recipes. Once cooked, black beans can be used instead of kidney beans to give a creamier flavour to Chili con Carne or thrown cold into salads for colour, texture and added protein.

Black beans are incredibly healthy, with a high fibre and protein content.

Recent scientific research has proved that black beans are a Super Food - loaded with high levels of antioxidants, special molecules that help the body to fight heart disease, cancer and ageing.

Because of the dark pigments in their skins, black beans have 10 times more antioxidants than oranges, for example, and significantly more than grapes, apples and cranberries.

However, like all other members of the common bean family (Phaseolus vulgaris) black beans contain a compound called lectin that must be neutralized by soaking the beans overnight, changing the water and then boiling them vigorously for 10-15 minutes before simmering. Never cook dry beans in a slow cooker or you'll have a nasty bellyache.

And don't worry about that other effect from eating beans; flatulence. Nobody need blame the dog if you add a pinch of bicabonate to your beans while soaking.

The good news is: black beans are delicious, cooking them is simple, the ingredients are available at all good supermarkets and you can adapt the dish for vegetarians by leaving out the pork.

This recipe is for a basic black bean soup. To make the soup creamier simply put half of it in the blender and liquidize before reheating. To garnish, add a dollop of creme fraiche or natural yoghurt, with a few chopped coriander leaves on top for decoration.

For an authentic Venezuelan touch sprinkle with grated cheese. Some Venezuelans like to sprinkle two or three teaspoons of sugar over their beans but I never got used to eating them sweet.

If you want to serve the beans with rice or as a side dish to accompany fried yuca (cassava) you can simmer the beans to reduce the liquid. Don't boil the beans when reheating as you will spoil the flavour.

Black bean soup will keep in the fridge for four days or can be kept frozen for a month.

Ingredients:
To serve 5-6 people you will need:
200 grams dried black beans
Pinch of bicarbonate of soda
Pancetta or bacon rashers
1 onion
1 green pepper
2 cloves of garlic
Fresh coriander
Olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
Oregano
Cumin
Worcestershire sauce (Salsa Inglesa)

1. Place the beans in a large saucepan or bowl. Cover with tap water leaving at least an inch of water above the beans as they will swell. Add a pinch of bicarbonate of soda. Leave overnight.

2. Before cooking, drain and rinse beans under the tap. Place in saucepan or pressure cooker and cover with fresh water. Bring to boil and boil vigorously for 10-15 minutes. Add no salt.

3. Reduce heat and simmer until soft - 60 minutes (minimum) in saucepan, 45 minutes in pressure cooker.

4. To make the sofrito used to flavour the beans finely chop onions and peppers.

5. Dice pork into small cubes.

6. Crush garlic cloves in mortar or garlic crusher.

7. Heat olive oil in a frying pan. Add onions and when they start to brown add pork and peppers and garlic.

6. Season with salt, pepper, oregano, a small pinch of cumin and Worcestershire sauce and when all ingredients are cooked remove from heat.

7. When beans are cooked place some of the water and beans in a blender, add the cooked sofrito and blend until creamy. Pour back into beans and simmer to reduce and allow flavours to combine.

8. Finely chop coriandor and add to beans just before serving, stir through.

9. Serve.

By Russell Maddicks

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Shredded Beef

Recipe: How to make Cachapas - Venezuelan corn pancakes

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Buying Harina Pan in the UK

La Reina Pepiada: The Curvy Queen of Arepas

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making Arepas the Hard Way

Lunch with Los Amigos Invisibles

Max and Jason of Current TV join Venezuelan band Los Amigos Invisibles for a brunch of arepas and cachapas at Beverly Hills' famous gourmet java-joint Coupa Cafe.

The restaurant is run by Jean Paul Coupal, the French-Canadian owner of Cafe Arabica in Caracas.

The menu combines single-estate coffees from the finest fincas in Venezuela with hefty helpings of popular dishes such as Pabellon Criollo, a perico platter and parchita (passion fruit) bon bons made from Venezuelan cocoa.

The song "Yo No Se", which plays in the background, comes from Amigos Invisible's album "Superpop".

To download Los Amigos Invisibles MP3 tracks click here:

To buy the CD "The Venezuelan Zinga Son, Vol. 1" click here:

To buy the new CD "Commercial" click here:




Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

Eating out - Arepera Glossary

Arepas are Venezuela's homegrown alternative to bread or rolls, cornmeal "cakes" about the size of a hockey puck that are crunchy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside.

Infinitely versatile, they can be eaten solo with butter or opened up and stuffed with a variety of fillings to make a delicious snack.

While most Venezuelans will eat arepas at home, if you want something more exotic - to quell your lunchtime hunger pangs or soak up the alcohol after a night on the tiles - then head to an arepera, Venezuela's very own fast-food joints.

First-timers will probably go for a simple option like ham or cheese, but if you want to try something more ambitious here is a brief glossary to help you negotiate the more head-scratching menu items at a typical arepera.

Arepa - Cooked cornmeal pocket stuffed with various ingredients.
Arepitas - Small fried arepas served as a starter to eat with nata (sour cream), or with soups and stews.
Arepa de Trigo - Large arepa from the Andes region made from wheat.

Fillings:
Aguacate - Avocado
Aguita 'e Sapo - Literally "Frog Water", but don't let the name put you off. This is just pernil (roast pork) in its juice, served with fried cheese. Found almost exclusively in Maracaibo.
Atun - Tuna salad with onions and a squeeze of lemon
Caraotas negras - Black beans
Carne mechada - Shredded beef
Chicharron - Pork crackling, also known in UK as pork scratchings
Chorizo - Spicy sausage
Diablitos - Devilled ham
Domino - Black beans and grated white cheese
Ensalada de Gallina - Chicken salad
Jamon - Ham
Montaña Rusa - Quail's eggs in mayonnaise (literally Russian Mountain, the term for a rollercoaster ride in Venezuela)
Morcilla - Black pudding
Orejas de Cochino - Snippets of pigs' ears in sauce
Pata-pata - Black beans, yellow cheese and avocado
Pelua - Shredded beef and grated yellow cheese
Perico - Scrambled eggs cooked with chopped tomato and onion
Pernil - Roast pork
Pollo guisado - Chicken cooked in a sauce
Popurri Criolla - Shredded beef, black beans and white cheese
Queso - Cheese
Queso de mano - Literally "hand cheese", a traditionally-made soft white country cheese
Queso Guayanes - Another soft white cheese
Reina Pepiada - Chicken, avocado, mayonnaise and peas

Sauces:
Guasacaca - Avocado sauce similiar to Mexican Guacamole but not as thick. Great for drizzling over arepas or empanadas. Every arepera has their own recipe.
Salsa picante - Hot sauce. Again, every place has its own recipe, so test to see if you can deal with the heat before drenching your food.

By Russell Maddicks

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Buying Harina Pan in the UK

La Reina Pepiada: The Curvy Queen of Arepas

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making Arepas the Hard Way

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's National Dish

Cornmeal Cravings and the Hunt for Harina Pan

Sometimes you can travel the world looking for something only to get back and find it was just round the corner all along. That's what happened to me when I went looking for Harina Pan, the basic ingredient for Venezuelan arepas.

You can say what you like about arepas; I've heard them described as "bland stodge in a bun", which is unfair, and "about the size of an ice-hockey puck and just as easy to digest", which is only partly true (the bit about the size).

But for millions of Venezuelans, the arepa is their daily bread, a versatile savoury snack that can be baked, fried or grilled, but is always guaranteed to fill you up.

For millions of families in Venezuela a steaming arepa smothered with butter and stuffed with cheese or ham makes a delicious start to the day.

For clubbers, fast food joints called areperas offer arepas stuffed with black pudding and spicy chorizo sausage as a pick-me-up after a night of sweaty salsa dancing and Cuba Libre cocktails.

The thing is, once you've got the taste for arepas nothing else will give you the same satisfaction. It's such a blank canvas. The taste of the cornmeal is so soft and subtle that it brings out the flavour of anything you stuff inside it; meat, black beans, scrambled eggs, avocado, anything.

After I moved from Caracas to the small town of Caversham in the UK, it wasn't long before Summer turned to Autumn, sunny days turned to drizzly grey, and I started to hanker for a few tropical treats to brighten the gloom.

I didn't know it then but I was suffering from cornmeal withdrawal. I needed maize, ground pre-cooked maize flour made into a dough and gently patted into a flying saucer shape, lightly toasted on both sides in a frying pan to give it a "cara" and then popped into the oven for twenty minutes or so.

I needed arepas.

My cornmeal cravings got so bad that I started to hunt down stores in the UK that sold Harina Pan.

After a quick search on the Internet and a few dead ends I found that the best place to get my maize-flour fix was in London, in the shops run by Colombians and Ecuadorians next to Elephant and Castle tube station. Cool.

The big shopping centre and the small shops in the railway arches behind it are a also a great place to pick up other stuff, like hot picante sauce and Latin music.

Looking further afield I also tracked down a small cafe/store in Brixton selling Colombian food that was another source for the coveted ground-maize mix.

But it was an effort schlepping all the way into London for a few ingredients and I started to go less and less, limiting my arepa blowouts to the odd times when I was lucky enough to be able to visit Venezuela.

But things are looking up. I've just found this new place in Reading, just across the river from Caversham.

Al-Medina in Oxford Road looks like any other Asian food store from the outside. It sells okra, sweet potatoes, every curry sauce under the sun and those massive bags of rice. But inside, wedged between the herbs and spices they have a shelf stacked full of Harina Pan, the white one, la buena.

At only £1.89 it's also the cheapest Harina Pan I've found in the UK.

So if you're getting cornmeal cravings and you're hunting for Harina Pan in the Caversham, Reading or Berkshire area, look no further than Al-Medina on Oxford Rd.

Now, if only I can find some cachapa mix, Toddy, a little tin of diablitos, some Venezuelan peppers, you know, aji dulce, the small sweet ones, Pampero Rum, Torontos, an ice-cold Solera Verde, the new CD by Los Amigos Invisibles... and... and... and...

By Russell Maddicks

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Arepa and Co: The only Venezuelan food outlet in the UK

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making Arepas the Hard Way

Glossary: Eating at an Arepera

La Reina Pepiada: The Curvy Queen of Arepas

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Pabellon Criollo - Venezuela's national Dish

Al-Medina Stores is at 168 Oxford Rd, Reading, RG1 7PL.