The Caribbean · Volume 45, The Arepa Coast, the Hallaca and the Titoté
Cachapa
The llanos and the centre
Illustration
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 92 sources in the brief
The word is said to be Chaima, kachapa, a kind of sweet arepa, and the dish is placed in central Venezuela, in Miranda; both claims are blogs' and a Cuban reference's. The amounts are Mónica Silva Cárdenas's, from the Venezuelan newspaper 2001; her recipe also takes two eggs and corn flour, which this one leaves out.
As tradition built it
Makes 4. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 450g fresh sweet corn, cut from the cob
- 120ml (1/2 cup) milk
- 1 tbsp sugar, or grated papelón
- to taste salt
- as needed butter, for the griddle
- to serve queso de mano, or a fresh pulled curd cheese
Method
- Blend the sweet corn kernels with a little milk, the sugar and salt to a thick, coarse batter.
- Butter a hot budare and ladle a round of batter. Cook until bubbles break the surface and the underside is browned, then turn and cook 3 minutes more.
- Lay a slab of queso de mano on one half, fold the cachapa over it, and eat it while the cheese softens.
What a modern chef changes
The corn's own starch, and nothing else
Rung 1
Method
- Blend half the kernels smooth and leave half coarse, so the cachapa binds on its own starch without flour.
- Rest the batter 20 minutes before cooking; the starch swells and the pancake holds.
- Cook in brown butter on cast iron and finish each cachapa under a hot grill for a minute, so the top caramelises as the bottom does.
- Grate a salted hard cheese over the queso de mano, which brings the salt the sweet corn asks for.