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

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

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

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

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