The Caribbean · Volume 45, The Arepa Coast, the Hallaca and the Titoté
Hallaca caraqueña
Caracas, at Christmas
Illustration
- Time
- 48 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 92 sources in the brief
The parcel changes from east to west, Rubén Rojas found for El Estímulo: Zulia's holds pork, chicken, chickpeas, garlic and allspice; the llanos' is beef, chicken and pork with a red sofrito and "is not adorned with anything", the chef Luis Alejandro Marcano says; Sucre's carries the jobito pepper, wine, potatoes and eggs and comes in fish and seafood forms; Mérida's filling goes in raw, the mountain air keeping it. The structure holds everywhere. Scannone's recipe makes fifty and runs to thirty two ingredients, and his numbers are not printed here. The amounts below are the chef Carolina Marcano's, for sixty hallacas, with the papelón and the string from Víctor Moreno's recipe for about fifty.
As tradition built it
Makes 60. Two days: the guiso the first, the wrapping and boiling the second.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
For the guiso
- 3kg lean pork leg, diced
- 3kg chicken, in pieces
- 2kg beef, diced
- 1.5kg onion, coarsely ground, for the sofrito
- 180ml (3/4 cup) garlic, crushed, for the sofrito
- 200g spring onion, for the sofrito
- 1kg sweet red pepper, chopped, for the sofrito
- 200g ají dulce, chopped, for the sofrito
- coriander, for the sofrito
- 2kg tomato, liquidised and strained, for the sofrito
- 160ml (2/3 cup) small capers
- 600ml (2 1/2 cups) olives
- 540ml (2 1/4 cups) raisins
- 60ml (1/4 cup) papelón, grated
- 60ml (1/4 cup) vinegar
- 480ml (2 cups) sweet wine
- 5 tbsp salt, in the guiso
- cumin
- 1 tbsp black pepper, ground
For the dough and the parcels
- 2kg precooked white maize flour
- 3.6 litres (15 cups) meat broth, from the guiso's meats
- 1.2 litres (5 cups) lard
- 6 tbsp onoto seeds, to colour the lard
- 5 tbsp salt, in the dough
- 60 plantain leaves, roasted over a flame
- 1 roll string
Method
- Cook the pork leg, the chicken and the beef separately until tender, keep the broth, and dice or shred the meats.
- Fry the sofrito of onion, garlic, spring onion, sweet pepper, ají dulce, coriander and tomato in onoto lard, add the meats, the papelón, the vinegar and the sweet wine, season with the salt, cumin and black pepper, and cook to a thick guiso. Cool it overnight.
- Make the dough with the flour, the warm broth, the lard coloured with the onoto seeds, and salt, soft and smooth.
- On a square cut from the plantain leaves, brushed with onoto lard, spread a thin round of dough. Lay on a spoon of guiso and a few capers, olives and raisins.
- Fold the leaf to close the dough over the filling, wrap in a second leaf, and tie it crosswise with string.
- Boil the parcels in salted water until the dough is set, lift them out and let them cool. They keep, and taste better the next day.
What a modern chef changes
The dough rolled, the leaf judged
Rung 3
Method
- Roll the dough between two sheets of leaf with a pin to an even 3 millimetres: the hallaca fails where the dough is thick.
- Cook the guiso the day before and chill it in a tray, then portion it cold; a cold guiso spreads and seals where a warm one slides.
- Roast the leaves until they smell of themselves and no longer, which is 10 seconds over a gas flame; a leaf roasted longer splits on folding.
- Boil 40 minutes exactly, then rest the parcels 10 minutes in the water off the heat before lifting; the dough finishes setting as it cools.