For those who're searching for a handheld meal in Venezuela, one dish reigns supreme: la Reina Pepiada, or “the curvy queen.” It's the nation's signature tackle its staple meals, the arepa. A creamy rooster salad in a crispy cornmeal pancake, it's undeniably scrumptious. And it tells a distinctly Venezuelan story: one in every of indigenous peoples, migration, and a magnificence; of rising up, falling down, and discovering new houses all throughout the globe.
“Each arepera has Reina Pepiada,” says Irena Stein, a Venezuelan-American chef and writer of the cookbook Arepa: Basic & Up to date Recipes for Venezuela's Every day Bread. When Stein lived in Caracas, the nation's capital, from 1974 to 1980, folks would costume as much as go to areperas, or arepa bars. And households would additionally whip up Reina Pepiadas for informal meals at residence.
In Kissimmee, Florida, the arepa has develop into a flexible staple. It's served alongside espresso and Cuban sandwiches at pan-Latin Categorical Cafe; filled with bacon, eggs, and sausage at Susana's Cafe; and at Venezuelan–Puerto Rican Pa' Pikar Latin Grill, crammed with rooster salad and avocado within the well-known Reina Pepiada. About half of the Venezuelan-American inhabitants lives within the state.
What precisely is on this dish that has conquered palates all around the world? At its base is a cornmeal patty cooked on a griddle, and generally completed in an oven, till crispy on the skin and chewy on the within.
Anthropologists estimate that folks in Venezuela and Colombia have been consuming arepas for 1000's of years, since lengthy earlier than Europeans arrived. The Cumanagato folks, indigenous to the Caribbean coast of what's now Venezuela, used the phrase “erepa” to seek advice from corn. Early conquistadors witnessed Indigenous folks in South America consuming flat corn desserts that they might toast on a sizzling clay floor known as a budare. This staple survived to develop into the idea of each the Colombian and Venezuelan diets.
Venezuelan arepas are thick and filled with fillings, so that they represent meals in and of themselves. The Venezuelan author Alejandro Puyana reported that earlier than the 2014 disaster that crippled Venezuela's economic system, the common Venezuelan ate 66 kilos of cornmeal flour per 12 months, amounting to about two arepas each day of the 12 months.
The start of La Reina Pepiada
La Reina Pepiada got here on the scene within the Nineteen Fifties, as Venezuela was experiencing speedy development and alter. In Caracas, the Álvarez household operated one of many nation's first areperas, El Likelihood, earlier than opening a second restaurant, El Centro Criollo de Nutrición Hermanos Alvarez, in an space of the town close to a well-known nightclub. Revelers would devour their arepas after an evening of partying, and phrase unfold rapidly about their scrumptious meals. Most of the period's well-known writers and entertainers would dine there.
In 1955, a 19-year outdated girl named Susana Duijm turned the first Latin American to win the Miss World Competition. The victory was all of the extra vital as a result of Duijm, born to a Surinamese Jewish father and a Venezuelan mom, was not from the higher class, not like the Miss Venezuelas earlier than her.
As the story goes, the Álvarezes seized the second of Duijm's win and, quickly after her victory, sat one in every of their daughters on a throne on the restaurant, dressed as much as appear like Miss World. A person passing by requested what the costume meant. After they instructed him that she was dressed as Susana Duijm, the person responded, “However I'm the daddy of Susana! I'll deliver her right here.”
A few days later, Abraham Duijm returned with Susana, and the restaurant ready a particular dish only for the sweetness queen: a toasted arepa filled with shredded rooster, mayonnaise, avocado, and peas. The Álvarez household named it Reina Pepiada, and the remainder is historical past.
In that very same decade, yet another change occurred that cemented Reina Pepiada in Venezuelan delicacies. When the Álvarez brothers opened up store, the one method to put together the dough for making arepas was from scratch. That meant eradicating the corn kernels from a cob, soaking them, then mashing them in a pilón, a wood mortar and pestle, to take away their skins and grind them down, earlier than including water and salt to make dough. It was exhausting work that was often carried out by the ladies of a family.
In 1954, Venezuelan engineer Luis Caballero Mejias came up with a way to de-skin, grind, and dehydrate corn right into a flour that could possibly be rapidly made into arepa dough with just a little salt and water. The now-ubiquitous corn flour model Harina P.A.N. launched in 1960. Like dishwashers or washing machines, processed corn flour significantly diminished the burden of labor in Venezuelan households, and it made arepas much more accessible for eating places and residential cooks. Now, the overwhelming majority of Venezuelan cooks use Harina P.A.N., though some folks nonetheless make conventional arepas with freshly floor corn, or maiz pilado.
José Alicandu, a psychology scholar and educated chef who lives in Barquisimeto, recollects that he discovered to make Reina Pepiada “by means of my tradition, and, I'd say, with my household.” His relations would recurrently purchase avocados on the market, look forward to them to ripen, prepare dinner a rooster for one meal, and use the leftover meat for Reina Pepiada.
“I feel it's a meal that's simple to make and that leaves you feeling happy,” Alicandu says. “It's nutritious; it has protein, and wholesome fat. If you'd like, you may take out the mayonnaise and put in yogurt.”
And it is scrumptious. The mix of mayonnaise, avocado, and rooster creates a textural distinction that “completely stimulates the tongue,” Alicandu says. “It's particular.”
La Reina in diaspora
Alicandu was residing in Colombia along with his sister when he revealed a recipe for the Reina Pepiada on the German cooking web site Kitchen Tales. “Typically, we missed our mother's cooking,” he recollects, including that, although there have been arepas in Colombia, they have been “very completely different” from Venezuelan ones.
Migrants overseas have turned to the arepa not solely as a supply of consolation, however as a supply of earnings, Stein mentioned. “Once you go overseas and you do not know anybody, and it is advisable to survive, what do you do?” she requested.
Stein wrote her arepa cookbook as a result of she wished to doc the Venezuelan diaspora, supply displaced Venezuelans a style of residence, and provides transplanted Venezuelans a method to share their tradition with their neighbors. Whereas doing analysis, she heard tales of individuals combining arepas with native flavors from their adopted houses. Stein calls the arepa “a really type ambassador” for Venezuelans overseas, as a result of it may be tailored to many meals cultures.
Make your personal Reina Pepiada
If you wish to, you may make Reina Pepiada with out a lot fuss. At its core, it's easy: shredded rooster, mayonnaise, and avocado, stuffed into an arepa. The unique served within the Alvarez household's bar additionally contained peas, however most recipes lately omit them. Loads of cooks add their very own variations, together with cilantro, lime, and candy peppers.
The arepa is a very powerful half. “It must be very crispy,” says Stein. “That's a very powerful aspect of the Reina Pepiada, or any arepa.” In arepa, a crispy outdoors yields to a delicate, barely chewy inside. She emphasizes that, after grilling the arepas initially, it's “extraordinarily vital to place them within the oven till they puff up.” She suggests making just a few rounds of arepas for apply earlier than stuffing them and making them right into a full meal.
In relation to the filling, there's just a little extra flexibility—consider all the various things that may go in rooster salad. Stein says that the condiments within the filling, together with salt and pepper, assist create contrasting flavors, and separate a bland arepa from an thrilling one. Stein's and Egui's recipe for Reina Pepiada, for instance, consists of do-it-yourself mayonnaise, cilantro, diced onion, a candy purple pepper known as ají dulce, and avocado layered into the filling three alternative ways.
The strategy of cooking the rooster makes a distinction, too. “For those who use charcoal-grilled rooster, it's a smoky taste, and it's crispy whereas nonetheless being moist,” Alicandu mentioned. When he was rising up, his household would use leftover boiled or roasted rooster for reina pepiada. They each work.
“You probably have leftover Reina Pepiada, you may make an actual salad,” Stein mentioned, “with lettuce on the backside, and you may eat it with piece of bread.” And the queen lives on.
