Never heard of arepas? You must not hang out in Venezuela or Colombia very often. Simply put it’s a griddle-fried corn cake made from a special sort of cornmeal, aptly named masa de arepas. If you’re as obsessed with tamales as I am but hate the time investment they take, you owe it to yourself to track some of this magic down.
The good people at Producto Alimenticio Nacional (P.A.N.) have been churning out this stuff since 1960 and while there are other brands, PAN has become synonymous with the product. The beauty of this cornmeal is that it’s *pre-cooked* and rehydrates in seconds allowing you to get on with frying before the spoon hits the bottom of the salsa jar. In the old method it took hours of pounding and steaming field corn to get that far so it’s no wonder it gained nearly instant popularity in the labour-weary households of Central and South America. I was surprised to find it locally so far north but that’s probably a testament to how far it has become ingrained into some of the food cultures of my southern neighbours. I found two varieties but the only real difference is the colour of the corn used, yellow or white. The only other ingredients besides corn are a few vitamin and mineral enrichments (niacin, iron, folic acid, etc.). The company also makes a third ‘sweet’ variety which didn’t make it across my border apparently but I read that it simply has added sugar and flour which I suspect you could mix in yourself as needed. It’s as cheap as ‘ordinary’ cornmeal (around CDN$3.50/kg) and the good news for the rest of the world is that it can be found easily online, even at the likes of Amazon. You might need to order multi-packs for the best price but when you remember it can make the usual suspects of corn bread, corn muffins, etc., you know it won’t go to waste. If you really end up with surplus, send it to me.
To make arepas you simply add a touch of salt to a measure of dry masa then rapidly whisk in fairly hot water to make what seems for the first few seconds to be a thin batter. Magically in about a minute it will have become a soft dough that can be easily formed into patties as you see fit. No flour, no egg, no other binders needed although more elaborate recipes can be made using such extras if you wish. I’ve tried both the cornbread and onion hush puppies from the P.A.N. website already and have a few other ideas percolating in my recipe brain. I suspect everyone afraid of gluten will cheer this insanely convenient product as life-changingly quick to use for everyday ‘bread’ since it takes none of the labour associated with cooking and cooling polenta into shape. Traditionally the cakes are thick enough to split and stuff with goodness but I’ve been frying it more thinly to simply top with what I would otherwise stuff inside. Black beans to pork carnitas to cotija cheese, it’s all fair game. I see sweet dessert recipes online made with the stuff too so that’s going to be this weekend’s experiment.
What you see above are thin cakes griddle fried in a touch of oil for about two minutes each side then topped with fresh spiced black beans. I flash fried some pea pods off my vines on the side for a bit of sweet crunch and topped it all with a convenient batch of Mexican crema and homemade quick salsa. Might be horribly nontraditional in arepas circles but they tasted fabulous all the same. My experiments in deconstructing tamales last year give similar yet different enough resulting flavours (mostly thanks to a different masa and steam cooking) that I’ll keep them in the repertoire but if I need a corn-meets-Latin America fix in under ten minutes, those orange bags of masa de arepas now have a permanent spot in my pantry.
