Looks delightful! I never think to cut up the squashes like that - will have to try.
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I grew blue corn in the garden this year. 14# if it. Today i decided to do something eith it, and made tortillas. Now, catch is, i know how to nixtamalize corn, I’ve done it before. It takes a lot of time, and is kind of a pain in the ass. So, looking for alternatives, i found 50/50 tortillas, half corn, half wheat flours. Score! Easy recipe:
200g corn flour
200g wheat flour
Hefty pinch of salt
Couple tablespoons of shortening. (Traditionally lard, but we have high ratio shortening from my wife’s bake shop. Use what you’ve got.)
Enough warm water to make a dough that just comes together. Mine took about a cup and a quarter)
Here, i cheated and used my Kitchenaid mixer, knead for about 10 min.
Wrap in plastic wrap snd let rest for 30-60min.
Tear off chunks 30-45 g, press or roll out thin and cook on a gridle (i don’t have a camal, but i do have a cast iron gridle that worked fine) over medium heat until it shows slight scorches.
Yummy!
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Yummy!!!
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fantastic! so do you freeze them afterwards? how many tortillas do you think you’ll end up with from 14# of corn??
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¡ fantastico y muy sabor!
damn fine work there, doc!
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I bought a chicken pot pie from the fancy pants grocery, as I was there already to buy pies for Thanksgiving and I’m on my own for dinner.
The instructions read 350 degrees for 20 to 25 min or until 165 degrees inside.
Me: 165? The chicken must be raw. Huh. Wasn’t it like 40 minutes the last time I got one of these? Ah well. It has been years.
20 minutes later and I decided to be all cool and use the thermometer. Glad I did. It wasn’t even 90 degrees.
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I have one but completely forgot about it 
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I’m extricating some key food posts i wanted to save here for posterity. I don’t trust the other place to have them forever:
Paging Doctor_Faustus
You mentioned you wanted ideas for Venezuelan arepa fillings. I will give you some ideas with a description and a link to pics, and if there’s any specific ones you’re interested in you can either Google them or ask me to find ones that look good to me. However if you want a more legit recipe i can ask my mom, who is a really good cook, to give me recipes but it might take longer to get said recipes back
The first batch of ideas aren’t actually fillings but alternate ways of cooking the dough.
- Bollos or bollitos. The absolute simplest one is. Its meant to be quick, simple and quite plain (but filling). You make a ball or log out of the dough and boil or simmer it for a short period of time, and serve with butter and some kind of salty semi-hard cheese. I’ve also heard of moms making this for toddlers and serving it in warmed milk, i think i’ve had them this way too just don’t forget the butter and cheese.
- Bollo Pelon - it’s basically a Venezuelan dumpling of sorts. You make a disk of dough and fill it with cooked ground beef, and shape it to a ball and seal it. It can be cooked two ways, either boil it in water/stock or cook it with a good pasta/tomato sauce. Serve with the sauce on top and Parmesan cheese.
- Arepa frita - Fried arepa. Also very easy to make, kind of made like a thin doughnut to cook evenly and is more naughty than regular arepas. In my family these are eaten with straightforward fillings like sliced ham, grated semi-hard cheese and butter, but if you look online i see folks using all kinds of stuff so add what you like.
- Mandocas - They use the corn meal dough but the dough is sweetened, and has anise seeds, shaped into loops and fried. Served with grated semi-hard cheese and if you have a sour cream or something similar you can use that as a dip. There are two regional variations, one has mashed mature plantain and the other is sweetened with syrup made from raw brown sugar blocks. I’m sure the plantain one is delicious but my parents were firmly in the other camp. Happy to provide my mom’s recipe, i’d just have to ask for it.
- Arepa Dulce - Exactly the same dough as the mandocas. Shaped just like the arepa fritas and cooked the same way (though they can be made without the hole), and also filled the same way (cheese, ham, butter, and a sour cream type dairy if you have it). You’d have to be careful cooking them because they puff up when cooking and if you’re not watching them you can burn them more easily.
- Empanadas - Easy concept, empanadas. Fill them with the same things you’d fill an arepa, they’re excellent.
If i’ve missed alternate ways to use the dough please contribute.
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Part 2: Again like above, just listing things and if you want specific recipes let me know! And it should go without saying that pretty much all of these can be mixed and matched, add other things like avocado, cheese, etc.
Arepa Fillings:
- Reina Pepiada - Main protein is shredded chicken, it’s basically a chicken salad that has mayo, avocado, cilantro and a few other things
- Arepa de carne mechada - Shredded beef arepa. A foundational side for Venezuelan food. My description below ties into this one.
- Arepa de caraotas negras con queso (aka Arepa domino) - Probably my fave, i generally have it with avocados as well. but it’s also one of the foundational sides you’d need to make/master if you want to make other Venezuelan dishes. The other foundational dish is the shredded beef which is also used as a filling. The full monte for us if you want to go all out is the Pabellon Criollo, which is black beans, shredded beef, and sweet fried plantain and is based on our national dish of the same name.
- Arepa de Perico - Scrambled eggs with sauteed onions, tomatoes and ham. I can do without the ham sometimes, but it’s more typical with it
- Arepa con salchichas - sliced sausages cooked in a tomato sauce. Its simple but quite nice, i haven’t had this since i was a kid since i don’t like sausages as much these days but i would still recommend it.
- Arepa con atun - Another top fave. Not much to say besides it’s tuna. It’s great.
- Arepa con sardinas - Similar but different to the tuna one, and doesn’t involve mayo. It’s more savory and overall more flavorful, this would be my #1. I couldn’t find good pictures of it so look at the tuna one, then imagine something better
I could suggest more but i’ll stop here for now. If others want to recommend ones i’ve missed go ahead
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Last one i wanted to move over. Here’s a rough recipe for a milk based picante/hot sauce:
Ok, buckle up because here’s my mom’s “recipe”. Mind you, the answer on the amounts will always be “to taste” so it’d take some tweaking to get it to where you like. In your case since you’ve never had it then it can be a good thing since you have no point of reference so you don’t have the pressure of trying to approximate exactly how she makes it.
Picante Casero:
- 6 habanero peppers with seeds. Peppers can be subbed for other types, if they are less spicy then add more of them, for reference forote (aka rocoto/locoto peppers) are less spicy so if you want to make it with the exact pepper then you’ll need more. How much more? She didn’t say.
- Get a pot you’ll boil the peppers in. The measurement will be one and a half times the amount of water that would fill a large empty glass jar you want to use for the hot sauce.
- Boil/simmer on medium high all of the peppers for roughly 20-30 minutes uncovered. This was a guesstimation on my mom’s part, her words were “until they have softened enough”, some of the water will evaporate and that’s fine that’s why we added the extra half of water. Once it is done you can blend the peppers with the water.
- The following ingredients/seasonings/spices/herbs will all be to taste, and the specific preparation is up to you: Salt, cumin (approx a teaspoon or a cucharadita as she says), oregano, cilantro, finely diced garlic or garlic paste, onion finely diced or blended into a paste (amount is approximately a small onion), vinegar to taste, and optionally you can use olive oil or another good quality oil but you’ll use a drizzle but these days my mom skips it.
- In the event that a hot sauce is too hot you can add whatever amount of milk that would be sufficient to tame the level of heat. In the instance that you do this the milk will thin out the overall flavor so you’ll also need to add in extra of the previous ingredients listed. If you’re adding in milk from the get-go then taste as you go to make sure it’s all working together.
That’s it. Even with the milk it’ll keep in the fridge indefinitely. I recall having a jar of the stuff with and without the milk in the fridge for over a year and it kept fine. The magic is making sure you have enough vinegar obviously. End result will likely yield more than the jar so make sure you have additional jars, my mom usually keeps a giant container and then will also fill up a smaller one that is less of a hassle to get out of the fridge when you want to use it for food.
P.S: Certain things can be taken out. Lately my mom’s been making it without the cilantro and oregano, though i prefer it with it. And while she doesn’t blend all of the ingredients together with the peppers you can, that’s up to your preference.
PPS: If anyone makes this let me know
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Well, the recipe i put up there made about 10. Not sure I’ll use all 14# for tortillas though!
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Not with that atttitude! haha
seriously, though, i love this. i wish i could grow corn and knew how to nixtamalize it!
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I don’t think it’s hard from what I recall, you have to soak it in an alkaline solution. I’m sure there’s nuances about the process that might make it time consuming but it shouldn’t be the kind of thing that’s inherently difficult.
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The first one looks so pretty, but i think that’s rosemary. I would be annoyed at having to pick off rosemary off my cake slice Cakes shouldn’t have inedible decorations (ideally).
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My wife would agree with that whole-heartedly. She tries to avoid fondant decorations as much as possible, even though it is technically edible, I mean, come on…
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