One of my New Year's Resolutions is to invite friends over for a meal at least once a month. I started off with a bang by making homemade arepas on the first day of 2018 for a brunch with our dear friends. It was time I returned the favor after so many delicious dinner parties at their place.
Arepas have fast become my favorite breakfast food. I was first introduced to this Venezuelan staple at a friend's wedding in Nicauragua. I was lucky enough to go on our her food tasting and sampled arepas as the early morning breakfast offering (to be served after several hours of dancing in the wee hours of the morning). I was instantly hooked on this buttery savory little cornbread pita hybrids. Lucky for me, a local eatery makes fresh arepa breakfast sandwiches stuffed with eggs and chorizo...nom nom. As one might imagine, I've started giving this local spot all the monies for these little treasures.
Arepas seem to be my culinary destiny. My sister is currently dating a Venezuelan native, and she convinced me that they really were easy to make ("it's so easy" is a phrase that makes me very wary in the kitchen). Side note: She sent me a very hilarious and very difficult to decipher series of videos of herself making them. When another friend had us over for brunch for, you guessed it, arepas and again assured me that they were super easy to whip up, I decided that I was going to take them on.
After doing the required internet reading, and buying the wrong kind of cornmeal twice, I finally found P.A.N masarepa at a Target nearby. This is a pre-cooked white cornmeal that is pretty much the official arepa cornmeal brand of choice from what I can gather. Pro tip: this stuff is like $3 a bag at a regular store but costs around $8 on Amazon. Glad I did a little more research than my usual mindless prime delivery on this one.
I mentioned my arepa making ambitions to one of the owners of my favorite areparia -- we went to the sister restaurant next door for New Year's Eve Dinner, and he gave me a few pointers:
1. Use water that's room temperature. You don't want it too hot or too cold.
2. Put the water in the bowl first with a little bit of olive oil and then adds the cornmeal.
3. Once you've pan fried the arepas, put them in a really hot oven. He suggests 400 degress - I think my sister put hers on 450 -- for about 20 minutes to get the nice pocket in the middle for stuffing.
4. You can do the pan frying step ahead of time and just pop them in the oven before guests come to make sure they are hot and fresh and to help with prep logistics.
It turns out, you can get the arepa recipe right on the back of the P.A.N. bag. Those kind of recipes always turn out the best in my opinion. Sure enough, I followed the recipe and they made exactly 10 arepas and were really easy to shape. The first few I made weren't flat enough, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. 10 arepas that were actually arepa - like came out of the oven at the end.
To serve, I took some inspiration from my friend's arepa brunch and picked up chicken, rice, beans, and plantains from a local Peruvian chicken joint. I served them with a simple salad, scrambled eggs, queso fresco (instead of the usual cotija), my favorite guac recipe, salsa, green chilies, coffee, mimosas, and the rest of my tangerine chess pie. Nom Nom the New Year is starting off deliciously.
