Making hallacas as a family. Taking up the Venezuelan Christmas tradition

A day in the kitchen

Hello to all my dear friends of Read.cash, I hope you are all well and have a good start this weekend. Today I want to tell you how mine started from Friday until today. The truth is that yesterday was a long and tiring day, but when you want to do things right and follow the family traditions there is no problem, it is just a matter of preparing yourself and doing it with the main ingredient which is LOVE.

My Friday started very early in the morning.

For a few days we had already planned to make some hallacas before leaving on our trip, hallacas are a kind of tamale made with corn flour and filled with a stew with beef and pork, chicken, all well seasoned. Here in Venezuela it is already a tradition to eat these rolls at Christmas dinner. As I understand it, this recipe was born from the slaves who lived in big haciendas and every year when their bosses made these big parties, they took everything that was left over in the kitchen and with it they made these delicious tamales.

The truth is that this hallaca is very rich and we are never satisfied with eating just one. At Christmas dinner we accompany it with a delicious chicken salad, ham bread and pernil (pork leg).

With organization everything goes well.

As I was saying, we got up very early, I dedicated myself to put together a publication on read.cash and my husband prepared us a very complete breakfast with Andean corn, arepa and avocado. While we were both doing our things we were discussing a dream I had had that night with my mom. I dreamed that I had gone to visit her and that she had given me a hug that when I woke up I could still feel it, I think I miss her very much dear daily and much more because we do not have communication as before due to the bad signal of the telephones.

After breakfast we got dressed and went shopping, I still needed some ingredients for the hallacas, such as garlic, bacon and some vegetables to make a soup for lunch.

The first thing we did was to go to the man who sells pork every weekend, then we went to Luvebras Supermarket and only I could enter because they are regulating the entry of people because of the covid-19, for some people that was causing discomfort but I think you have to follow the rules to avoid the spread of the virus.

My son Israel chopping the meat

With the things already in my hand we went to the house and I immediately distributed the tasks; my son Israel was in charge of cutting the meat in small pieces; thank God I was able to buy a little bit of each thing that it has, that is to say pork, dewlap, chicken and beef.

I assigned my son Fabian the task of cleaning the leaves, and on other occasions when we make the hallacas at my mom's house we have had to do it, so I was sure he would do it very well.

On the other hand, my husband is good at chopping seasonings, so I left him the job of chopping everything, chives, peppers, paprika, onion, garlic and other things.

The hallacas are very tasty but there is a lot of work to do and there is no better solution for this than to have a good work team to solve this situation.

A very tasty lunch

And while all this was going on I was in charge of making a delicious soup and I say delicious because it was really delicious, I think that more than seasonings and meat what gave it more flavor was the love with which I made it. I think it was about half past one in the afternoon when I served the soup to eat.

The hallacas stew

My intention was to divide the lunch and immediately start cooking the stew and so I did. Let me tell you that the smell and taste of the stew was sensational, especially because the pork gives it a very rich taste. This is the third time I have made hallacas by myself and I know very well that my mother's secret to make them very tasty is to prepare a good stew, so I did not skimp on adding a lot of garlic, adobo and oregano.

Wrapping the hallacas

It is not easy for one person to wrap almost 100 hallacas, but as I told you at the beginning it is something you have to prepare and take it easy, little by little I started wrapping; I like to do it myself because once I allowed my older sister to help me at that point and the hallacas did not turn out very well. While I was wrapping, my husband was tying.

The first thing we do is to take two banana leaves, sprinkle a spoonful of dough that is well seasoned and soft, put the stew on top and decorate with strips of paprika, raisins, olives and capers.

In my country we do not all make the hallaca in the same way, that is to say, some things change. For example in the east they put boiled eggs, towards the center of the country they make the stew cooked and then leave less cooking time to the hallaca, on the other hand towards the Andean land we like to make the stew half raw and we also add some grains of chickpeas.

It was about 5:00 in the afternoon when I got help from a neighbor who is an artist wrapping and tying the hallacas, her name is Belkis and I am very grateful to her for coming to give me a hand.

We made a lot, I didn't count them, my mom said that if you count them you can't make them, so I just make calculations and I'm sure they came out to be almost 100. I went to take a good bath and my husband finished watching the pot. For those who don't know, hallacas take 2 hours to cook, counting from the moment it starts to boil.

At my mother's house all this cooking process is done with firewood and the pot is huge; this year when I get to my mother's house and we are making the hallacas I would like to take many pictures to let you know the experience of this tradition from the countryside.

Exhausted but happy

Today I woke up a bit exhausted from the hustle and bustle of the previous day but happy. I immediately turned on the computer and mounted the pot to make coffee and if you knew the smell in the house, it was a rich smell, the smell of Christmas. As soon as I felt that smell I was transported directly to my mother's house and I thought a little bit about my childhood, about my mother and I felt a little melancholy.

As soon as I woke up I heated up 4 hallacas at once, but don't think they were for me alone!!! noooo!!!!! They were for my husband who was still in bed watching the news and I wanted to surprise him by bringing him breakfast in bed with his hot coffee just the way he likes it. I won't show you a picture because at that hour we are very ugly.

I am truly grateful to God, to my work team, to my neighbor and I am thankful for these beautiful traditions that I hope will never be lost and will be passed on from generation to generation. Today there are many people who do not have time to devote to these things, they say it is too much work and simply decide to buy them from anyone who sells them, but the truth is that I say as the song says "the best hallaca is made by my mother" how nice that all the children feel this and it remains as a memory all their lives.

Well friends, thanks for your support, I hope to continue publishing a few more days before my trip, I say see you soon, take care and have a great weekend.