My typical Christmas food: The “Hallaca”

Hello fellow Steemians!

Today since it’s Christmas Eve I wanted to show you what is the typical Christmas food in my country!

Here we have several meals around this date, which usually consists on jam bread stuffed with olive and raisins when baked, chicken salad, turkey slides or baked ham, and the most important one, called the “Hallaca” which is the one I would like to talk about because I am sure not many of you know about this meal.

This days the Hallaca is always the protagonist in Venezuela’s family dinner and it has a lot of influence from the original indigenous people on this land.

Arturo Uslar Pietri said:

it’s like a compendium of the miscegenation process that occurred in this land. Some ingredients are raisins and olive from the Romans and Greeks, caper from the Arabs, meat from the Spanish, and finally corn and banana leaf from the indigenous people.

The Hallaca is basically prepared cornmeal filled with what’s is colloquially called “Hallaca’s broth” which consists on mostly meat and sometimes chicken, along with the ingredients already mentioned before. Every family usually have their own touch and twists, adding secret family sauces for example or making an unique combination of condiments , but essentially an “Hallaca” is always the same.

The meal itself is presented at the table wrapped with banana leaf tightly tied.

So sometimes eating an Hallaca feels like opening up a present because you have to unwrapped it!

The actual process from start to finish is very slow because the banana leaf need to be cut and prepared with olive oil, the same goes to the cornmeal, and the Hallaca broth needs to be cooked which takes a lot of time because it’s always a lot of food in order to fill out all the Hallacas. Apart from this, once the Hallaca is finished and it’s all tied inside the banana leaf, it need to spend about 1 hour in boiling water. And only then The Hallaca is finished. This is why a lot of families tend to get together when making this meal in order to work as a team covering all the part of the process and be more efficient when doing it.

The final results are always worth the effort with its unique mixture of flavors, and since this meal is only common on Christmas, people start to link together eating Hallacas with enjoying a good mood and having a nice time with our loved ones.

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This last 2 pics are my family dinner table with our typical food

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What do you think of the Hallaca? Have you ever taste one? Would you like to? And what’s the typical Christmas food in your home?

Cheers and Merry Christmas for all Steemians!!

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