How to Make Hallacas - Venezuelan Christmas Food

The most important dish at Christmas in Venezuela is without doubt the hallaca, a cornmeal-dough pocket stuffed with a host of tasty ingredients, wrapped in a plantain leaf, and boiled.

Culinary legend has it that the hallaca originated from the tradition of the plantation owners giving the leftover scraps from their Christmas banquets to the slaves, who would use them to spice up the boiled cornmeal dough (known as bollos) that constituted their daily diet.

That's why, the theory goes, hallacas are stuffed with such an odd range of things, from chicken, beef and pork stew to olives, raisins, capers and even boiled eggs, depending on the family recipe.

Making hallacas is an elaborate process with many stages, and in Venezuela usually involves the whole family.

Luckily, Adriana Lopez, co-owner of Pica Pica restaurant in San Francisco, has made a very comprehensive set of videos showing how to make your own hallacas at home.

For more great recipes check out Adriana Lopez' blog: AdrianaLopezBlog.com

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

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

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.