Arepa (English)

 Arepas are a round and flattened little corn cake, which can be toasted or fried, and melted cheese. Meat, pork, or avocado stew can also be added, either on top or as a filling, and it can be seasoned with a bit of hogao or tomato roasted sauce. Although it is very traditional in Colombia, judging by the word, it is indeed Venezuelan.

Preparation of the arepas in the United States may be approached by using corn powder to prepare tamales: Maseca, but the original Harinapan,can be ordered on Amazon. In my opinion, yellow corn works better in the United States. You need to anticipate for the same quantity of powder and warm water, but it works perfect with fresh water as well. You put on a bowl the powder, and add a pinch of salt. Adding cumin would add the Colombian Creole touch to the mix, and also a moderate amount of mozzarella cheese may make it more crispy. You add the water little by little and mix with the hands until you reach a soft, compact substance. You will know it's ready if the dough is not sticky and, when pinching on it, it doesn't crack on the edges. If it cracks, then you can just wet your hands briefly and work on the dough with the wet hands. That controls that the new water addition is not too large. If the dough is too sticky, then you may add some more of powder.

After the dough is ready, then you start making balls as if you they were play dough. After a smooth ball is done, then you put it on one palm, and start doing a pretend clap to flat the ball gently. The thinner the crispier, the thicker the fluffier, so it depends on how you like it. If you want to roast it on a regular frying pan, you must put the pan to heat on its own until it's really hot. You shouldn't touch it to try whether it's hot, you just wave your hands around and you should feel the heat on your hands when weaving from afar. That will ensure your arepa will not stick. Then you lower the heat and put the arepas on it. On middle to low heat, you leave the arepa heat up on its own. You shouldn't try to flip it too soon or it will stick. You can tap it briefly with a spoon, if it feels a bit hardened then you may try to flip it over. If it feels sticky when you try to flip it over it needs longer heat, so stop trying. 

Once you flip it, the other side doesn't need much more heat. It's good to press on it with a wooden spoon so the edges reach the heat on the pan, and it gets roasted more evenly. If you roast it, you can add some more mozzarella cheese on it to let it melt on its surface. You can also just fry it as a short cut, or if you like it fried.

The word "arepa" is first documented as part of the “Caraca” language, an Indigenous language from Venezuela, and it is also the name of a plant similar to amaranth (a type of quinoa) or pira (like popcorn corn). The language is documented along the eastern portion of the Andes mountains in Venezuela, all the way to the coast, and it gave rise to the city name “Caracas” (see here). This first documentation appears in the diachronic corpus of the Royal Spanish Academy with Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa’s Compendium and Description of the Indies, in 1629, as a synonym of bread. The next documentation was compiled by the researcher Carlos Eduardo Tello Lee in 1741, in a legal document from Cundinamarca (on the eastern branch of the Andes in Colombia), in which a woman is accused of feeding witchcraft through various foods including arepa. In my own search for documents to study voseo, I happened to find a reference to the arepa in a document from Cali in 1797, far from Cundinamarca, but also on the Andes region.

Then countless documentations appear in the works of Tomás Carrasquilla, now in the other branch of the Andean region, in Antioquia. The arepa is a symbol of identity in the Antioquia region, but it seems to originate from the opposing branch of the Andean region. From there, it would have spread first to Cundinamarca, since Venezuelan mountains continue towards Cundinamarca. The Caraca language is part of the Cariban family, and it does not seem to be from the Muisca people, who belong to another language family, but rather from the Muzo people, Indigenous to Cundinamarca and Boyacá and part of the Cariban family.