Arepas

[Graye]

I love these South American "muffins" which I first had in a great Venezuelan restaurant. I've found several recipes for them but they always ask for pre-cooked cornmeal and I've never seen any for sale. Has anyone ever encountered this? Or does anyone know how to go about preparing it yourself?

[Green Aura]

Do you mean polenta? You can buy it in a solid pre-cooked slab from most supermarkets.

[Graye]

I must admit I've never associated the two. I'll have a look at a pack next time I go shopping. Every recipe I've seen just mentions pre-cooked cornmeal. I've never tried polenta so I suppose I could kill two birds with one stone by buying some anyway...

[Green Aura]

If you can't get it pre-made, it's very easy to make yourself. Sprinkle cornmeal into boiling water and keep stirring until it thickens and is cooked - about 20 mins. Makes your arms ache a bit!
Post your recipe when you've had a go - I'd love to have a go. Never heard of them before.

[Graye]

Mmm, it looks as though arepa-makers can be a little precious about ingredients for their recipes. I've had a look on Google and some say polenta flour works and others say you HAVE to have something called masa harina. I know that masa harina means corn flour and this and polenta actually seem to be more or less the same from another quick Google so I'll give it a try anyway.

They are a little like light English muffins served hot with eggs and cheese but in the restaurant they were larger, halved and served with all sorts of fillings. I had mushroom in cream sauce but they had beef, chicken, etc too. That was then served with a largish salad with unusual spicy dressings. It seems they are either Colombian or Venezuelan and very popular there - they can be steamed or fried. Presumably they would be gluten free which might be of interest for some people too.

I have some maize meal so I'll try an experiment and report back!

[Green Aura]

Goodo!

[Graye]

Well I made some. The taste is excellent but the texture is all wrong, more like a tortilla than a muffin. OH loves them and has eaten them anyway!

I'll do a bit more research and report back...

[ina]

corn flour and this and polenta

Corn flour here is starch... So definitely not at all like polenta!

I suspect it's more like the flour the South Americans use for tortillas - a bit like very fine polenta... It maybe be "pre-cooked" as in steam treated or so. A bit like couscous? And don't use the precooked polenta. It's vile... I make my own polenta using the coarse stuff. I don't think that would be any good for your muffins, either.

So many things you can make from corn...

[Graye]

It's strange how different items have slightly different names which changes the whole meaning. I actually used maize flour to try the arepas and not what we generally think of as corn flour (corn starch). Maize usually equals corn but not here!

I think you may be right about it having been steam treated or something similar Ina. One of the recipes I found suggests mixing the pre-cooked masa harina with water to make a dough. This would be pointless with the stuff I cooked up as it was already a slab of dough. It also seems to come in a regular flour bag too rather than a pack.

When I said mine had a tortilla texture I meant tortilla in the Spanish sense (a thick, slightly rubbery omelette) rather than the South American version. I've found a suggestion online that I might be able to buy the masa harina in some of the big branches of the larger supermarkets. I'll have to dash into one before we head off back to France on Monday.

[ina]

When I said mine had a tortilla texture I meant tortilla in the Spanish sense (a thick, slightly rubbery omelette) rather than the South American version.

Gosh - I'm getting all bamboozled now! Of course, the Spanish tortilla is different...

The best tortillas I ever had I was given in Mexico, in a village, where they were cooked over an open fire, on a bit of metal... With pigs, kids and goodness knows what else running around. Health and Safety would have had a fit, if they'd seen that... We just had a pinch of salt with them - and they were divine! Have tried to make my own, but just getting the right flour is difficult.

[Jandra]

I think masa harina is made of corn (maize) which has been boiled with water with extra calcium in it. Not really the same as regularly cooked corn flour/meal.

Jandra

[Uller]

You can buy masa harina from www.casamexico.co.uk, along with lots of other Mexican ingredients.