“Array-pass”
I could write a book on this alone… I have pages of notes, and it’s fast becoming an obsession. What that means to me, of course, is that the information flow is still accelerating.
Very sketchy outline: Reading Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human changed my thinking on several things.
That has convinced me (tons of evidence) that we are evolved to eat cooked foods. Food is not a short-term survival concern, but of course it’s often THE long-term survival concern. Put another way, if food is a real issue, you’re in a long-term survival situation.
So, cooking is a survival skill. Since we cannot thrive on raw food (and eating many food raw wastes most of their value), it’s literally being able to feed yourself.
In the middle of absorbing that info (and reeling at the implications) Blue Apron hit me with Arepas, Venezuelan/Colombian corn cakes. Bag of yellow flower and basic directions. Ohhh…. kayyyyy. In this case I was supposed to put spicy loose ground beef on them.
First attempt ever was VERY easy, and very good. Big hit. So, after a little delay in there, I set about learning more.
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I’m thinking that this might actually be close to the ultimate long-term survival food. Here’s why;
They’re good. Very appetizing.
They’re easy. The most basic form is a the corn flour, water, a pinch of salt, and maybe a little oil for the frying pan. 20 minutes, maybe
15 with practice.
Apparently these things were to the Indians of Venezuela and Columbia what tortillas were to the Aztec culture, the mainstay of life. That speaks well for their nutritional value.
Arepas are obviously in the broad family of journey/johnny cakes, hoe cakes, “unleavened bread”, Matzah/Matzo, ancient pizza, etc. They are so simple to make that they could be cooked pretty much anywhere, under primitive and/or improvised conditions. “Hoe cakes” were so named because slaves reputedly could cook them on a (hopefully cleaned) hoe in a fire made on the spot in the fields. I’ve only done fried, it’s simple, but I see recipes that partly or wholly bake or even broil them.
The corn flour for these is a bit special, but it’s very cheap and available and seems to have a practically unlimited shelf life, and since there’s no moisture to speak of there’s no excess weight. Granted that there are four grocery stores within a mile of here and I only found it in one (the fourth, of course), but that was in a Giant, and for $3.19 per kilo. That is a lot of corn cakes.
They can be simple or elaborate, and they can incorporate or enclose/be combined with pretty much ANY other food that’s available, and make it into a better, more complete meal. Endless variations, from breakfast to dessert.
The default form is sort-of like an English muffin (crumpet, the flavor nothing like), but they can be made larger or smaller, and if fried in a pan or on a hot surface the two sides get crispy but the edges stay soft, and if you slit them partway the thing opens into a pocket like a Greek gyro, so you can put anything in it and eat it as a sandwich.
This also seems like a great “gateway drug” to the skill-sets needed for baking, another, more difficult survival skill that is more difficult to convey than one might think.
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Why have I not heard of these before?
Apparently I’m WAY behind the curve. I completely missed that these were a huge hit in the closest city among urban hipsters last summer, just about a year ago, and there are now dozens of food trucks specializing in them downtown, more than a dozen restaurants have incorporated them into their menus (including lobster salad arepas and caviar arepas) and a ton of thirty-line one-concept local-color web and magazine articles.
Seems things are changing, probably because the arepas are such a hit in the US. I checked the bag that I’m currently using, and it’s definitely different than the first bag I bought- it has more English on it, says it’s made in the USA and distributed by Goya. The first bag I got from the Giant definitely said it was made in Venezuela, no mention of Goya, and there was very little in English. This one also says it’s gluten-free over and over again, clearly catering to American preferences.
I can certainly see why they’d want to move production out of Venezuela at this point, and employing Americans is a good thing, but I’ll bet the corn they’re using is different. I don’t know if this means that it’s now the same as the Goya-branded flour or not.
Link to “Arepas – recipe for the most basic form”
– Robert the Wombat