Venezuelan Arepas Con Pollo

Venezuelan Chicken Sandwiches in Toasted Cornmeal Patties

Arepas Con Pollo Mechado

As taught by Monire Child from Venezuela

Note: This is a perfect special lunch, brunch or dinner. If you make the stewed chicken the day before (it tastes better that way anyway!), that leaves only 15-20 minutes of active time making the arepas the day of the meal, starting an hour and a half before you’d like to eat. They’d be great served with any kind of green salad.

Makes 8-10 small sandwiches. Big eaters’ll have two.

4 lb whole chicken or 4-5 chicken breasts

2 tsp annatto seeds

1 Tbsp whole cumin seeds

2 yellow onions, sliced thinly

1 green pepper sliced

½ red pepper sliced

3 cloves garlic, smashed with the bottom of a glass into chunks, then minced

1 Tbsp dried oregano

1 tsp ground cumin (to taste)

1 tsp salt (to taste)

4 roma tomatoes blended with 1 cup water

P.A.N. Pre-cooked cornmeal

1-2 cups shredded mozzerella

corn oil

Make the Chicken Filling

(1.5-2 hrs)

Simmer chicken in salted water (about 2 tsp salt per gallon) until chicken is opaque through and through, 45min-1 hr, skimming and discarding foam and oil off the surface as it appears. Strain chicken, saving the broth for making soup or rice later. (broth keeps in the fridge for weeks, and freezes, too). Once chicken has cooled enough to touch, discard any skin and peel strands of meat into bite sized pieces, discarding all bones, tendons and cartelidge.

While chicken is simmering, prep all the veggies and gather spices you’ll need next: slice yellow onions, green pepper, red pepper, smash and chop garlic, blend tomatoes w/ water.

Heat an 8 qt pot on medium. Add just enough corn oil to cover the bottom and annatto seeds. Once the oil has turned bright orange, and before the seeds burn remove and discard with a slotted spoon. Add cumin seeds, garlic and onions. When onions are soft, add peppers, 1 tsp salt, and 1 Tbsp oregano. Once peppers are soft, add pulled chicken and stir. Add blended tomato water and stew for about 20 min., adding salt and cumin powder until it tastes perfect to you. When chicken has soaked up most of liquid but is still juicy, turn off heat. It’s ready to use now as filling, and is even better the next day. Refrigerate or freeze.

Make arepas (total 1.5 hrs, active time 20 minutes)

2 ½ c. lukewarm water

2 cups P.A.N. Venezuelan cornmeal

1 tsp salt

corn oil

Preheat the oven to 350. Pour the water in a bowl, add salt, slowly add the corn meal, and mix/squeeze with hands until it feels just a little soggier than Playdough. Let set for a couple minutes. Put a saute pan or griddle on medium-high. Make a round ball the size of a lime by rolling dough between your palms with a circular motion.  Then pat back and forth between your hnands to make a ½-inch-thick patty.

Put a little corn oil in a bowl. Use your fingers to oil lightly both sides of patty, and place on pre-heated pan on medium. Leave for about 10 minutes and flip. You want a slightly golden look on both sides. Transfer each directly onto the oven rack to finish cooking, about 40 minutes.

Assemble Sandwiches

Slice hot arepas sideways with a small knife (a steak knife works great) as if it is a thin version of an english muffin. Sandwich between the two halves: hot cumin-stewed pulled chicken and grated mozerella.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2010

The Story

From Mangoland to Portland

Annatto Seeds and Palmita

By Lindsay Sterling

           

It’s a particularly wonderful experience to eat native Venezuelan food in the middle of a sleet storm in Maine. While biting through a steaming hot, toasty, white arepa, dripping with cumin chicken, soft green and red peppers and yellow onions, I couldn’t help wonder: what the heck were Mona Child and her husband, Gustavo, doing here in sleetville? When they could be living where they used to live in Miami, or before that in Venezuela, where mangos ripen not on trucks, but trees and were practically free? Answers: they were U.S. citizens who were not learning any English in Miami, and in Venezuela they got bit by the bug that makes you want to leave where you grew up to see another part of the world. They tried Boston, but didn’t appreciate what they got in return for rent. “Here, sit in the bathroom,” Gustavo joked. A cousin encouraged them to visit Portland. They’ve been living here for 9 years now, running a day care in their home for 12 kids who all come rushing with glee at “A comer!”

I’m not going to tell you how to make arepas con pollo mechado because you can’t do it. Mona imports two key ingredients herself via her suitcase: raw milk palmito cheese and annatto seeds.  She tells me you could use mozzarella, but mozzarella isn’t as tangy, or coated in natural vinegar. “Do you have these?” She says, holding out a silver tin of brick red seeds shaped like half-karat diamonds. “Ah note oh,” she says, offering to get me some on her next trip. Without the annatto, the stewed chicken would not look enticingly yellow-orange but pale white, a color I happen to be at odds with until mid-June. Without those two ingredients, this meal just wouldn’t be the same.

We can, however, transport ourselves from the sleet of the culinary grind by making ourselves one piece of the meal, the arepas. La Bodega Latina on Congress Street carries the Venezuelan P.A.N. pre-cooked white cornmeal we need. Arepas would make a lovely substitute for biscuits, English muffins, crumpets, and other small-pancake-shaped fodder. They’d be great sliced in half and embedded with butter and honey for breakfast, or made into a series of small ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch. Plus, making them is fun, and (if you’re looking for this type of thing) a gooey, hands-on but simple project for kids.

Mona doesn’t even look at the recipe on the bag. She turns her oven to 350 degrees, fills a medium sized bowl halfway with water, adds enough salt to make the water slightly salty to taste, and then dumps in a bunch of cornmeal. She plunges both hands into the bowl, mixes everything around, adding a little more cornmeal and squeezing the dough through her fingers until she has the right consistency: soggy play dough. She lets it firm up for a minute while getting a large pan up to medium heat on the stove. She forms balls of dough slightly larger than limes and then flattens them into 1/2 inch thick patties by throwing them from hand to hand. She pats corn oil directly onto the patties before placing each in the hot pan. She browns both sides on medium heat before sticking the arepas directly on the oven rack. Forty minutes later they’re toasty warm, crunchy on the outside, bread-like in the middle, and as comforting and mild. Of course, you can’t import a whole culture to a new land, only pieces of it. After brunch with Mona and Gustavo, I wish it weren’t so.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2010