The Flavors of My Venezuela

If there is something wonderful about being born and living in Venezuela, it is the thousands of delicious flavors and scents that blend in our brains from practically the time we are in our mother’s womb. Even more so if we are born into a multicultural family.

For those of us Venezuelans who descend from a mix of native-born criollos and foreign immigrants (as in my case, with a mother from Barquisimeto and Carora and a father who was the son of Lebanese parents), from early childhood we came to know (long before the famous globalization) unique and special flavors that marked our taste memory forever.

In my case, I remember how the taste of my first chicharrón, crispy pork rind (my mother’s favorite dish), mingled with the taste of raw kibbeh (my father’s favorite).

Just as there were arepas on our table every day, there was also pita bread; just as there was Carora-style suero (a tangy cultured cream), there was my grandmother’s laban (yogurt).

Today it is easier to understand this mixture of flavors, but in the seventies and eighties few people ate like that. Many people looked at Lebanese food with suspicion, especially if we ate raw onion with meat that was raw too. That was something of a scandal! How funny it is to remember those times!

But without a doubt, Venezuelan flavors are the best for me. I love Lebanese food, Italian food, a nice paella or a delicious pâté, but I cannot live without my white cheese (paisa, palmita, guayanés, telita, any kind at all) or my black beans.

I will never forget living in Canada in the nineties and having to search through countless markets to find a white cheese so I could make tequeños (our cheese sticks) for my European and Asian friends. Back then I never found one. Today, of course, things are different, and they tell me that cheese for tequeños can be found in many countries.

Something else I terribly missed in Canada was black beans with suero, little chicharrón arepas, and the Andean pastelitos that remind me of my childhood in Barquisimeto, when a woman from Trujillo who worked for my grandmother used to make them.

Our cuisine was so enriched by food from other continents that even Don Armando Scannone included Italian, Lebanese, French and Spanish recipes, among others, in his Blue Book, Mi cocina a la manera de Caracas. That book contains the recipes of my father’s sister, now deceased, who was one of the best Venezuelan-Lebanese cooks in our country. She also learned to cook Venezuelan food, which she loved. She did it following the recipes in Scannone’s Red Book to the letter. I fondly remember her exquisite bread pudding and her hallacas.

It is impossible in one article to find enough lines to talk about the richness of Venezuelan food, without even getting into how the food of other countries enriched it. Because who doesn’t love a nice cheese or dogfish empanada? Who doesn’t go wild over a good Carora-style tostada or a Maracaibo tumbarrancho? Not to mention fried fish with tostones (twice-fried plantains), a good pisillo llanero (shredded dried meat from the plains) or delicious fried pork.

And as for sweets, don’t get me started. I learned to make those with my grandmother from Barquisimeto, who was a great pastry cook.

At home I make a quesillo (our flan) at least once a week. It can never be missing from our family gatherings. And let’s not even talk about the little homemade sweets we all love: suspiritos, coquitos, polvorosas, guayabitas, almidoncitos and so many more.

Just as I had that mixture of scents and flavors from childhood, many Venezuelans had the same experience, and surely their children have a wonderfully multicultural, global palate that lets them eat anything, anywhere, at any time. A marvel in these times of crisis, when serving steak with French fries costs so much.

Thank God, today we have wonderful Venezuelan cooks and chefs who have devoted themselves to preserving and passing on our native cuisine, and others who have blended Venezuelan cooking with that of other continents.

It is incredible that today, in the food crisis we are suffering, our cooks and chefs are making history not only with the delicious food they make, but with the great work many of them do helping foundations feed so many people who are going hungry.

Because that is the wonderful thing about Venezuelan cuisine: our food is always meant for sharing with others! Otherwise we don’t enjoy it the same way.

I know that someday we will be a great culinary power in the world, because our dishes are enriched with love for our Homeland and with the love of so many immigrants who came to our land to give the best of themselves.