Hello, dear FoodTrippers. My consultancy jobs are over and I am now back and ready for more foodtrips! This week I am featuring something I made borne out of a challenge by my dear Venezuelan friend, Luis Manuel. It's called arepa, a traditional delicacy and considered the national bread of Venezuela. It was my first time to make arepa when I accepted Luis Manuel's challenge and was excited to see if I could pull it off.
Arepa is a corn-based snack, made from corn flour, baked and lightly fried, and served with a multitude of fillings. For examples, combinations of black beans and meat; mashed mayonnaise, chicken and avocado; scrambled eggs with peppers tomatoes and onions, and a lot more. Arepas are surprisingly easy to make. You mix the corn flour with salt and water, cook it on a griddle and stuff it with whatever you have on hand. In my case, at that time, I had left over fried chicken and coleslaw salad. When my arepa "buns" are done, I scooped out a bit of the insides and spread butter on and stuffed them with my chicken-coleslaw filling and sprinkled with a bit of mozzarella cheese. Yum! These delicious self-contained arepas are excellent for breakfast, lunch or dinner. For me, arepas filled my hungry stomach up instantly.
In the future, I will make experiments to improve my arepa (prevent it from being dry) and cook up more yummy fillings. I hope Luis Manuel was here to sample the results, and I wonder if I would have gotten a passing grade? My husband, although it was his first time to eat arepas, said it wasn't bad at all.