Beggars

These last few weeks have been very busy for us as we are in what we hope to be our last few weeks before leaving for Mexico once again...we are working to raise our support to the level it needs to be in order to leave for the field by the end of July.  We were hoping to go by the end of June, but have had to push that back a month; not really a bad thing, really, just a disappointment, but we're dealing with it.  :) 

So we've been visiting friends, family, supporters and potential supporters, casting our vision for ministry and sharing about our work.  We've either had guests in our home or been guests in somebody else's home just about every single day for about three weeks now...sometimes more than one somebody's home in one day!  On the days that we are home, we've had the challenge of catching up on all the housework we've neglected with all of our busyness...and I don't really want to talk about the pile of dishes over there in the sink.

As is normal with such a busy time, we aren't exactly operating at full capacity since we're getting tired and pulled in many different directions.  We've been handling it fairly well, for the most part, with only some minor issues and conflicts...encouraging for me since I haven't traditionally handled stress all that well in the past. 

So this last Wednesday night, we were driving to our supper appointment which was about 30 minutes away from our house.  About halfway there, Miguel noticed that we were about to run out of gas, so we stopped at a gas station close to our friends' house to fill up.  But when Miguel asked me to give him the cash from my wallet, I discovered that my wallet was not in my purse!  I had taken it out for some reason and hadn't remembered to put it back.

Miguel said, no problem, I'll just use the debit card and went to pull his wallet out of his back pocket.  He got a really funny look on his face, however, as he realized that he didn't have his wallet either!  He had taken a shower right before we'd left and his wallet apparently never made it back into his pocket. 

So there we were, no gas and no way to buy any and 30 minutes from home!  It was rather embarrassing to show up at a supporter's house, enjoy their hospitality, eat their food and then have to ask them for some gas money on top of that!  It was either that or spend the night with them, LOL!  We felt like beggars.  Fortunately, our friends saw the humor in the situation and we all had a good laugh about it...don't think Miguel will be able to live that one down very soon, though. 

Okay, gotta go clean up the house a bit...we've got company coming for supper!  I'm making arepas and fried plantains...hope they like Venezuelan food!

Quesillo (Flan)

I was thinking about what special dessert I could make for Miguel today, but of course, I would run out of flour right when I get the urge to bake! I could have just run down to the little neighborhood store around the corner to grab a kilo of flour, but then I'd have to dress the kids, get out in the cold...that's when I thought of quesillo (flan), which is pretty much Miguel's all-time favorite 'postre' (dessert). So that's what is in the oven now...

Here's a picture from the archives!
October 2005-Venezuela
Petra María (fellow missionary in Venezuela)
made me this lovely quesillo
for my birthday that year!

Petra makes the most beautiful quesillos...
mine are not nearly so pretty!

So, here's the easiest recipe ever for a good quesillo...you can prepare quesillo in a double boiler on the stove-top or baked in the oven. I don't have a double boiler, so I just bake mine in the oven. I will write the recipe as if for a double boiler, but will add the directions for the oven option at the end.

Quesillo (Flan)

1. Stir 1/2 cup of white sugar in a heavy saucepan or skillet over medium heat until it is melted and caramel-colored. It is easy to burn, so it is best to stir constantly, especially once the sugar begins to melt.

2. Pour the sugar mixture into a double boiler pan.

3. In the blender or with a whisk, mix together 6 eggs, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk (397 g or about 14 oz), plus the milk can filled with regular milk. Once blended well, pour over the sugar mixture in the double boiler pan.

4. Add water to the double boiler and cook at medium heat for 1 hour. It is done when a knife comes out clean. Remove from the double boiler and cool before turning out onto a plate.

Oven Option: Pour the sugar mixture into a round glass* pan or a glass* loaf pan. Pour milk mixture into the pan over the sugar mixture. Place into a larger glass* pan and put into a 350 degree pre-heated oven. Pour boiling water into the outer pan to a height of about 3/4 to 1 inch, thus creating a "double boiler" effect. Bake for about an hour or until knife comes out clean. I don't usually turn the quesillo out onto a plate using the oven option, we just cut and serve it right from the pan. :) To be honest, the quesillo doesn't usually last long to enough to make it worth dirtying another dish! LOL

*Glass pans are preferable, but you could probably use metal...just seems like the glass works better for the flan...

Chicha

When I hear the word chicha, I get a picture in my head of half a coconut filled with fermented corn or pineapple drink, because that's what my experience with chicha was in Colombia...but in Venezuela, chicha is a very popular non-fermented rice drink. Think rice pudding in the blender with sweetened condensed milk on top! Yummo! Miguel got a hankering for his beloved chicha yesterday, so I found a recipe online and it was declared a success.

Chicha

Recipe:

1 cup rice

5 cups water

salt to taste

3 cups whole milk

1 can sweetened cond. milk

1 can evaporated milk

cinnamon

Boil the rice in the water, add salt to taste.

When the rice is tender, blend together with

the whole milk (mine didn't fit into the blender all at one time).

Add the cans of milk, blend more (can reserve

some of the sweetened condensed milk for the topping).

When cool, serve with chipped ice.

Top with sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon,

chocolate powder, and/or chocolate/colored sprinkles.

There are quite a few variations of chicha in Venezuela,

so feel free to experiment!

Enjoy!

Some very happy customers!

Recipes for a Venezuelan meal

Okay, we'll start with the arepa con carne mechada since that picture loaded first...

Arepa-the Venezuelan "gordita"

Arepas are made from a pre-cooked corn meal that is generally available at Latin food stores in the U.S. It might be hard to find in other parts of the world outside of Colombia and Venezuela. The most popular brand in Venezuela is the Harina PAN, a bright yellow package that is easy to spot in the stores.

I do not measure the water that I add to the corn meal, but I would say that recipe should go something like this:

2 cups corn flour
1 tsp. salt
3? cups of warm water (I think it's about 1 1/2 cups of water per cup of corn meal)

I add the water and then continue to mix the dough for a few minutes since the corn meal tends to soak up the water...sometimes I get it too hard and have to add more water after it's 'set' and that's hard. Anyway, the mix should be somewhat easy to handle, not too sticky and wet, but not so hard that the sides crack when you form the arepas.

Make a ball with the dough, then gradually start flattening the ball to form a cake...I generally just grab a handful and make them all relatively the same size. Fry the arepas on a griddle with a little oil until browned and crispy on both sides.

Colombians eat their arepas with the meal like bread, but Venezuelans cut them open and stuff them with many different kinds of fillings, ranging from butter and cheese to scrambled eggs to beef, pork, or chicken. The arepa in the picture below is stuffed with shredded beef, called 'carne mechada'.

Carne Mechada

Boil beef (chicken, pork, or other meat could be substituted) and cool, then shred
--For seasoning, add salt, garlic, onion, etc.

Sauté chopped onion, garlic, cilantro, peppers, and tomato in oil
Add the meat and simmer; add a little bit of the beef broth if needed to keep the meat moist
For added seasonings, comino and/or adobo can be used.

Meat cooked this way is also great over rice or to accompany beans!

Arepa with carne mechada

Venezuelan Potato Salad

Potatoes

Carrots

Beets

Mayonnaise

Salt to taste

Optional ingredients: boiled eggs, onions, pickles, chopped cilantro

Boil the potatoes, carrots, and beets. Sometimes I just throw the potatoes and carrots in the pot together and then peel afterwards. Or, the carrots can be peeled and chopped and then boiled, but that's a bit more work... The beets can be boiled whole, but it doesn't take as long if they are cut up in several pieces. They do tend to lose their color, but adding a bit of lemon juice will help.

Peel and dice the potatoes, carrots, and beets. Add mayonnaise and salt. Sometimes I add garlic powder for extra flavor. I also like to grate onion and then add just the onion juice-it avoids the crunchy burst of onion, which Miguel doesn't care for. If you add the boiled eggs, onions, or pickles, chop first...

Venezuelan potato salad, fried plantains, and arepa with carne mechada (cheese on the side)

I really commend you if you are still reading!!!! This is turning out to be a loooong post...maybe I should have broken it up. Oh well. I did want to add a note about frying plantains...

Tajadas (fried sliced plantains)

Venezuelans love their fried plantains (plátano)! They eat them nearly every day. Generally, tajadas are made from ripe plantains. Just peel and slice at an angle, then fry in oil. I have found that the riper the plantain, the more greasy they get...the exception to that is when I've used coconut oil and then they don't seem to be as greasy. To avoid frying, sometimes I sauté the tajadas in butter or a little oil and that seems to work pretty well, too.

There are many ways to cook plantains. The green ones are best fried like chips, with salt. I also like to add green plantain chunks to soups, but I think that's an acquired taste... The riper ones can be boiled (with or without the peel-cut each plantain into several pieces), roasted on the grill or in a fire (with peel-poke holes to allow the steam to escape), peeled and baked in the oven (they can be cut open and lined with cheese or slathered in butter and brown sugar!), etc. I've even had a sort of lasagna once that had fried plantains instead of the noodles! We eat them raw (ripe, only!). :) I guess the possibilities are endless...

Soup Recipes

Okay, before I write about anything else, I'm going to work on posting some of the recipes I promised...I had to make them up, which is why they are rather vague; they aren't really written down anywhere in my kitchen, although I'm sure that different ones could be found on the web. Let me know if you have any questions!

Sopa (Soup)

--1 lb. (1/2 kilo) or so of beef-stew meat with bones is good and it doesn't hurt to have some fat on it!

--beef buillion cube(s)-I like the kind you can get in the Latin food section of the grocery stores...Knorr brand or something similar

--salt, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin

--onion

--garlic cloves

--cilantro

--potatoes

--carrots

--Optional ingredients: sweet potato, yellow squash, corn on the cob (cut into smaller "rounds"), small red/yellow potatoes, green plantains.

I like to fry the meat a little in a bit of oil, adding chopped onion, garlic and cilantro. Add the desired amount of water and the buillion cubes and then throw in the chopped carrots and potatoes. Other ingredients, such as the squash or sweet potato can be added later since they don't need to cook as long. Check for flavor, you might need to add more salt or another buillion cube and remember that as the soup cooks, it will tend to get a bit more flavorful as everything mixes together (Miguel always says I tend to go heavy on the salt!).

Anyway, to serve this soup a la Mexicana, add sour cream (or crema), lemon juice, and hot sauce with a side of corn tortillas.

One other note about sopa...we found out that 'sopa' in Mexico contains 'fideos' (soup noodles), so this kind of soup would technically be called 'caldo' (broth). Interesting...we didn't know we'd been misleading people as to what we were going to serve!!! Oops.


Chicken Soup

Chicken soup is a variation of the above, using pieces of chicken instead of the beef. I generally use a whole chicken cut up and leave the pieces "as is" instead of deboning. Boil the chicken with the onion, garlic, cilantro, and seasonings, then remove it from the broth while the carrots, potatoes, etc. cooks. Chicken soup is definitely better with the pieces of corn in it and the squash adds a good flavor, too. Chicken soup fixed this way is called 'sancocho' in Colombia and is a favorite for the weekends and cookouts while on 'paseo' (outings to the country on Saturdays or Sundays).