Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Venezuelan people need your help!

0 Comments Published by Rod


At this moment, the little nation in which I was born is in desperate need for help. Its ruler (as I can’t call that a government) has decided its needs are more important than its people and has selected a few above the rule of law.

Venezuela is bleeding to death and the international community does nothing about it.

Basic human rights are violated every day, people can’t find anything to eat and the government is (on an attempt to remain in power) cutting liberties, and charging favours with nations around it. It has become a totalitarian dictatorship.


What is exactly going on in Venezuela?

The short version of the events is: A protest against food shortage, insecurity and extremely bad administration of the current government has escalated into civil disobedience and huge conflicts between the Venezuelan government and its own people as the government has decided to silence at any cost anybody who chooses to criticise the government.  At the moment the Venezuelan government has murdered 21 people, 33 people has reported torture and close to 261 has been wounded. These numbers are going up everyday.


These are images the government doesn't want to go public.
Weaponless students fighting the national police armed with water cannons, pepper spray, teargas, guns and rifles.
Image via Frank Gomez


A more detailed version of the events is:

After Chavez's death in November 2011 (formally announced in March), the government had to invoke new national elections which were conducted in April 2013. The result was an extremely narrow margine in favour to the second in command, Nicolas Maduro. These elections were obscured as the government actively avoided any international verification of the results or any statistical analysis, introducing a reasonable doubt onto who was actually the real winner. At this point most people wanted a change already as Chavez's policies had driven the economical prosperity away as well as it introduced an enormous amount of corruption at every single level of society, being corruption of the justice, the one granting freedom to those thugs, murderers and sociopaths supporting the government. Insecurity became the most pressing issue for anyone living in Venezuela.

In January this year (2014) a Miss Venezuela went back to visit her family after a long time of living overseas, and while she was visiting the country she was robbed and killed by several gunshots on a freeway between two cities of Venezuela. This event exploited rage into every single student and member of the society, forcing themselves onto the streets requesting from Maduro a radical change in which the rule of law needed to be preserved or a change in the government itself as it had been proving itself inefficient.

The death of this beauty queen forced many to recognise
the difficult situation lived in the country.

Maduro labeled this movement a conspiracy against him and a cue to take the government out and responded to these claims with brutal force (deploying the army, the national guard, the police and the government armed factions called ‘collectivos’, a different label for the government guerrillas) killing students in the process and issuing order for detention and later on incarceration of the opposition political leader Leopoldo Lopez, while restricting internet access and creating media blackout to prevent anybody from knowing about their actions.

Leopoldo Lopez being taken by the national police as he requests freedom for the nation
armed with white flowers in one hand and the national flag in the other.

All these efforts to repress the people had the complete opposite effect. Raged on, people (fearless of any consequence) went in the streets to fight back the now full on totalitarian ruler, who has decided to release these armed guerrillas (in addition to the national police and groups of the army lead by Cuban soldiers) in the streets to kill, rape or kidnap anybody marching against the government.

Students fighting back while the government shuts the protests down.
Image via Frank Gomez

All of this is happening while the world is watching Ukraine and international observers have had their hands dirty with Venezuelan money. Countries such as United States, Canada and Panama have condemned all actions taken against the Venezuelan people and several parliaments and senates of Latin America have raised issues against their own governments to get some action going to protect the Venezuelan people.


Why should I care?

You see, the world is quite little and there is this fabulous theory called “the butterfly effect”. Any action you do as little as it may be, will create a chain of events to produce something completely unexpected on the other end.

If you are not Venezuelan there are plenty of reasons why you must care. The Venezuelan ruler is driving the entire country to bankruptcy and every single industry in the nation is failing massively.

Venezuela is the first oil reserve in the world, it is one of the richest countries with the highest index of poverty and inflation. Every single barrel of oil Venezuela doesn’t produce increases the cost of living in regions such as: North America, Australia and Europe. These are as you very well know some of the biggest economies in the world. Every single day Venezuela continues in mayhem it affects you by increasing your cost of living.


So, what can YOU do?

Spread the word, the more people participate the more pressure we can generate. Venezuelan’s are using the #SOSVenezuela or #PrayForVenezuela twitter hash tags to request for help, but the government is little by little closing all the channels in which any voice may get out to tell the truth about what is going on.

Isaac Asimov once said: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"


Contact your local media and demand from them coverage of what is going on in Venezuela. The more voices the least our governments can ignore the situation and proper international observers (as well as media coverage) will expose the dictator and introduce pressure for a change that will not involve violence in my home town.

Spreading the word is quite easy, tweet, post on facebook or just talk to your friends.

Contact your political representative, raise your concern about this issue with them. There are many governments in Latin America being complicit about the current situation as they are receiving huge amount of money to maintain their silence. Your representatives aren’t under the same interest, they will create some force in the government to recognise the difficult situation that my home town is living.


Finally, brothers and sisters of Ukraine. Even though my home town is submerge deep in the oppression and tyranny of a totalitarian government we are glad your struggle is getting somewhere. Let’s fight for a free world.

We are united in our fight for freedom and respect of human rights.

Some of the voices joined our pledge:











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Friday, March 14, 2014

New post is coming...

0 Comments Published by Rod

I know... I haven't publish anything for quite a while now... But I will be breaking my silence soon.

Venezuela, my heart is with you through this hard time.

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Sunday, January 6, 2013

Lessons to be learned from the Venezuelan situation

0 Comments Published by Rod

Many people of first world nations think about the third world as a series of slums/poorly coordinated nations directed by a bunch of dictators; the stereotypical representation of a banana republic... and I know, I know... generalisations are usually wrong but the idea with this post is to share my point of view of those lessons rich/developed nations should always take into consideration about small societies from the third world.


I have come a long way from Venezuela to be here but every time I try to compare the States, Australia and Venezuela I notice clear differences between its societies... as well as the dangers hidden in the state of the well being.

Trying to explain these points of similarities and hidden dangers I am going to use three short phrases to state the obvious (yet so many times forgotten in the past).

  • Nothing lasts forever - Anonymous
  • Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity - Albert Einstein
  • The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people - Martin Luther King Jr.

Three great phrases everybody has to remember every time they look up onto the depth of the sky, breathing fresh air (well... as fresh as you could get) enjoying every single bit instant of freedom.

Why? You may ask...

Well... let me take you through a small tale, introducing as I go along each of these phrases... How about if I tell you:

Once upon a time there was a young boy, sitting in front of a cliff facing the ocean, thinking to himself “How marvellous earth is... creating something as beautiful as this scenery where the waves crushes against the walls of the cliff, bursting with foam and sounds and colours! Marvellous indeed because I could take a seat every day and enjoy such a wonderful permanent painting in motion as it is!”

Eventually the young boy grew up, he became a man with a family to maintain; moved to a bigger brighter place to be happy and work until one day... when he was old and grey decided to come back to his favourite place to contemplate this painting once more... but this time he couldn’t find the cliff in front of the ocean; instead a beautiful beach laid in front of his eyes and he couldn’t believe it.

“Where did the small mountain go? Am I at the right place?” – He could definitely tell he was where the mountain used to be as it was located in front of his town; the very same between the valleys and neither the valleys nor the town had moved. At that moment he understood the waves were not just making sounds on each coming hitting the wall; it was eroding the rock little by little; imperceptibly until it disappeared completely into the white foam of the sea.

Don't fool yourself taking things for granted

Hence, “Nothing lasts forever” or as any old Venezuelan granny would say “nobody will suffer a sickness for hundred years... neither the sickness will be that strong nor the victim will endure it that long” but you could apply the same logic and reverse the direction, instead of something bad like a disease it could be: “well being won’t last forever”

If you are an optimist this shocks you (although you might think is obvious at this point), like a cold bucket of water thrown at you while sleeping forcing you to wake up.

But why does it apply to me (that I live in the States, Canada, UK, Australia or whatever)?

Because of a bitch called entropy. 

A bloody attribute of our universe that states everything has certain level of chaos that can’t be taken away, only displaced to a different system in order to create a temporary state of order.


This is the chaos star (designed by Snoopydoo) the perfect symbol of chaos.
The symbol represents forces pushing outwards of a circle (not on this drawing) breaking the balance of things.

It means that if your country wants to be rich with well coordinated society and high standards of living it has to take all the unwanted things and dump it somewhere, as well as take the wealth out of somewhere else (lands, producers, markets... the money has to come from somewhere, right?).

(Sigh...) I wish that picture would be just that simple but no!... entropy tells you as well if you want to preserve that ordered state, you will need to constantly use energy to push that chaos away from your ordered system.

The Yin/Yang symbol represents the balance...
but in order to maintain it both parts needs to swim around each other.
(Drawn by Chinese Ranger)

Well... first world nations achieved (via hard work, war, battles and education) an ordered system where each citizen contributes to maintain the order by being polite with their neighbours, participating into political, economical, social and scientific aspects of it all; while those of the third world are struggling to gain that fine balance needed to succeed as a rich and developed nation. Look at it as every citizen is an agent of order or chaos, if you do your part the order is maintained but if you don’t, little by little, just like the waves crushing against the walls of that cliff, the energy used to maintain the system ceases to circulate, the system starts its slow degrade to its natural state of chaos, collapsing eventually the system.

But if people know this, they surely will keep doing their good work, right? 

Prosperity makes people go blind... blinded by the illusion of well-being maintained over several generations until... one generation that doesn’t really remember the what or why of several rules and dropping it as “everything works as it should so why bother?”

There is when I remember the second phrase by Albert Einstein - two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.
Speechless...
Albert, you said it perfectly after you realised how humans used your discovery of the formula of energy to build bombs.

And true it is! Humans are a silly stupid race; instead of studying "why the weather is more extreme each year?" or "how can we all live better?" we sit down to discuss who is right and how's wrong? Is it really getting hotter or colder? What’s the secret agenda behind everything everybody does?

Instead of helping each other (as collaboration has been proved to be more effective than individual work) we sit down with pointing fingers, blaming whoever committed a mistake. 

Instead of forcing ourselves into consider the implications of our acts we prefer to ignore certain situations and relay in others to solve any problem; to which my mind praises the third and last phrase of this post, wrote by Mr Martin Luther King Jr. - the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

And what of this ramble is related to Venezuela and how can we all learn about it?

Venezuela is a nation of wealth and natural beauty to such extent that it holds one third of world oil reserve with massive amounts of minerals (iron, copper, gold, titanium, etc) yet most people tend to forget their duties and responsibilities (such as voting in national elections or actively pursuing the truth), hoping for a messiahs of some kind to come down from heaven to take them to paradise without any kind of effort or sacrifice.
Venezuela is a country so dependent of its wealth that has forgotten it won't last forever and it has decided (actively) any kind of investment on any other source of income such as its people.
It has become a nation where its politics seek a way to secure power and become richer and faster without thinking of future generations, feeding chaos into the destruction cycle of those systems created by previous delegations of countrymen.

Is difficult not to establish a comparison between the Venezuela I knew and the nowadays Australia (the so called Land of Plenty), when walking down the streets I overheard somebody criticising the government followed by a "but you know what? I don't care... we will be fine." or when you turn on the TV and listen to people trying to 'protect' as much as they can the carbon industry of Australia because their retirement depends on it instead of proposing new ways to generate wealth or develop this nation... I know, I know... is not as bad as the rampant corruption, street gangs, daily violence and number of death Venezuela suffers at this moment... but my parents didn't think the current situation of the country that was known as "the Switzerland of America".

Here comes the ultimate lesson to learn: all it takes is you to do nothing to contribute on the destruction of order. Do you take your part as an agent of chaos? Or do you try to maintain the order by teaching morale, ethics and the importance of good education to future generations?

Still think the voice of just one person doesn't make a difference? Take a look to the following video...


This man opposed the mark of tanks with just groceries on his hands.
This man stood in front of tanks regardless to everybody else's comment, hiding from the scary barrel of the tower of the tank.
This man became history because his will dictated his actions.


We might need to do less if we all chip in...
Think about it.

Cheerios!

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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Talk to me about the Hallaca

5 Comments Published by Rod


Before explaining everything about it, and how to make it (for those interested on try it) I will warn you that I will be using lots of terms and ingredients many has not heard before, as many of these ingredients are widely used on Latin-American cuisine and nowhere else. Every ‘weird’ ingredient will have a reference to Wikipedia; in case I miss some of them, please leave a comment and I will edit the post. 

If you search online for Hallaca you will probably find 100 different recipes,
but all of them will look fairly similar.

The Hallaca (if you are trying to imagine the sound it will be like ‘ah jacka’... although it seems that I pronounce it as ‘A jackass’... yes, I know you are giggling) is a traditional Christmas dish of the Venezuelan cuisine. There are different variations such as the ‘Pastel en hoja or Pie in Leaves’ of Dominican Republic, the ‘Pastelle’ of Trinidad and Tobago and the ‘Tamal’ of Peru and Colombia; all of them with similar taste but the Venezuelan is one of those with more refined flavours... And I am not saying this just because I am Venezuelan, just in case.

Its flavour (for those you who have not been fortunate enough to try it) is a mixture between polenta with beef stew with a hint of paprika, the sourness of olives, the saltiness of capers and sweetness of raisins; anyone who had it will have a hard time trying to describe its flavour. (Could you describe the blue colour to a blind guy?)

The Hallaca has a very interesting appearance as is stew filling bright yellow dough protected by layers of plantain leaves, and its intense fragrance combined with the smoked Plantain leaves will definitely overtake any other sense in your house.

A bit of history...
Its origins date to mid 1500s when Venezuela was a dependency of Spain and the big families had a huge number of slaves (Africans or Indigenous people) which were forced to eat the leftovers of their masters and given that Christmas is a very important holiday for Spaniards the leftovers were exceptionally good with plenty of pork, beef and chicken to be used by the slaves to cook their own dishes.

To most of the slaves a common meal was the cornmeal dough (a paste made out of corn and water) as it contains lots of nutrients and provides a considerable amount of energy; and as you probably guessed by now, they decided to mix with the leftovers to make some special Christmas dish served on Plantain leaves (the plantain and banana trees are extremely common in Venezuela).

Not many have tried the plantain.
When cooked is sweet and extremely tasty (good source of proteins too).
Apparently, several Indigenous tribes used the plantain and banana leaves as a natural way to preserve food by wrapping the food with it and then boil it; and as you might guessed as well, using this technique the slaves were sure its precious Christmas meals could last a very long time (taking advantage to the maximum the leftovers for later on).

Because the Hallaca takes a lot of effort (and numerous hours of work), it was served to friends and families only and with the release of the slaves, the Hallaca made it into the palate of wealthy families (as a way to say thanks to them) which then became a tradition, then a custom in the country.


Leaving history aside
Next I will try to explain the full process (the recipe is for 50ish portions, you could try to scale it down, but there is no warranty it will have the same outcome), as I have to do it from scratch because Australians don’t sell very easy some of these ingredients (such as the smoked Plantain leaves). The process is divided in stages: Ingredients, smoking leaves, making the consommé, making the stew, making the dough, putting it all together and cooking it (again).

If you want to try this recipe and you have not done it before; please, read it entirely before start, it has a lot of effort and is hard but is worth it.


Harina P.A.N, primary component of the Hallaca.
Image from Adriana Lopez Blog
Ingredients:

  • 3.5 Kg of Plantain or Banana leaves, plantain recommended as it is a bigger surface than the banana, but is not mandatory as the flavour remains unchanged.
  • 2 Kg of Cornmeal (there is a product called ‘Harina PAN’ which is the best for this).
  • 1 Kg of beef mince (preferable a grounded clean of fat cut).
  • 1 Kg of beef for stew (is the one cut in squares, it has to be clean of fat; has to be chopped in squares no bigger than 1cm each).
  • 1 Kg of pork leg meat (chopped in squares about 1cm long).
  • ½ Kg of pork leg mince.
  • 1 ½ Kg of Hen (you could change it for chicken).
  • 500 grams of bacon (separate it in 400 grams and 100 grams as you will use it for different things, chop the 100 grams).
  • 6 big onions finely chopped (I have no idea how much grams that will be).
  • 3 big onions cut in rings.
  • 200 grams of capers (try it before use it as it might be extremely salty, in that case put it on a strainer and wash it with 2 litres of water that should take the excess of salt).
  • 3 green capsicums (finely chopped).
  • 2 red capsicums (cut in strips).
  • 1 bunch of leek (chopped).
  • 1 bunch of chives (chopped).
  • 2 cloves of garlic.
  • 1 bunch of parsley.
  • 1 bunch of coriander.
  • 500 grams of tomato (chopped in squares).
  • 150 grams of butter.
  • 900 grams of filled green olives (or deseeded olives).
  • 350 grams of pickled vegetables or giardiniera. Blend it with half cup of water (without the vinegar or the salty water).
  • 2 litres of cooking oil (I use canola, but you could use any type of oil with mild flavour) plus ¼ cup of oil.
  • 500 grams of raisins.
  • 1 ½ cup of red wine.
  • 2 table spoons of chicken stook powder.
  • 2 table spoons of mustard sauce.
  • 5 table spoons of steak sauce.
  • 4 table spoons of tomato paste.
  • 1 table spoon of sweet chilli (if you could find something called Aji Dulce will be better).
  • Bay leaves (you will need around 30 to 40 leaves).
  • Salt.
  • Pepper.
  • And finally the difficult ingredient: Annatto (15 table spoons). If you don’t find it, change it for saffron imitation plus paprika powder. Saffron imitation has less kick than real saffron, but is cheaper and gives you good colouring. It has to be the bright orange.
  • Optionally: 100 grams of chopped almonds.


Smoking leaves
The plantain and banana leaves are made predominantly of hard and coarse fibre with a strong and unpleasant flavour when is raw. In order to allow it to be malleable and remove some of the taste it has to be cooked by smoke or expose it directly to fire for short periods of time.

To cook the leaf you will need a barbie (BBQ) on mid to low fire with its grill, pre-warmed evenly.

Take each leaf and place it directly on the grill, notice how the colour of its fibres changes from bright green (or light green depending on which side is up) to a darker and intense olive colour. The Leaf should NEVER change to brown or black (it means you burned it). Make sure the entire leaf is cooked and the colour is consistent and even.

Notice her hand is moving against the fibre and
it should be following along the fibre.
Do not tear apart the leaf because you will need a big enough patch where to place everything later on and bigger patches will be easier to handle than small ones.
Repeat the process for each leaf.

Tip: While cooking the leaf, try to have a humid cloth at hand. The barbie will be hot and the leaf will release a bit of oil (will be hot as well), if you want (and you know you are not going to burn it) use the cloth to handle the leaf as you cook it.

Wash each leaf with soapy water once you have finish smoking it and dry it with a cloth. Be careful with the leaf, it will tore easily. Easy trick to clean it, wipe on the same direction of the fibres.


Making the consommé
Consommé is a very simple soup (my mom would have hit me in the head as I said that). To make it take a pot with 4 and half litres of water and leave it on fire until it boils. Once is boiling take chopped (into pieces) chicken and put it in the water with two table spoons of chicken stock powder (if you want to be a bit more fancy, you could make your own chicken stock), a pinch or two of salt. Let it cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until the chicken is white-ish inside yet soft to the touch.

Once the chicken is fully cooked, take it out of the consommé and shred its meat in long strips. Add to the hot consommé the coriander leaves (you don’t need to chop it). After some good 10 minutes the consommé will be ready to use, just filter it with a strainer to have a clear golden liquid (get at least 8 to 9 cups of consommé).

It might look like this. If you are hungry you could have a cup in the meanwhile.
Tip: If you leave the chicken in the consommé after is done, it will overcook (turning it into chicken flavoured rubber). As soon as the consommé is finished and the chicken is cooked take it out and leave it in a plate.


Making the stew
The stew is the tasty bit of the Hallaca (like the filling of the meat pie, a good meat pie has a great stew, take your time and you will be rewarded). The stew should never be stirred by more than one person and should be the same person at all times; this is a rule and do not ask why?!

In a big enough stew pot (you will be mixing up almost everything here, try to get the side right) you will pour ¼ cup of cooking oil and set the fire to low; slowly melt the butter in the pot.

Once the butter is almost entirely melted, add the chopped onions and garlic. Stir gently until the onions releases its juice.

Then add the chopped green capsicum, leek and chives. Keep stirring for another 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, the capsicum should be almost cooked. At this time you will be adding 100 grams of bacon, let it cook for a little bit to then add pork mince. Stir for 5 minutes, include the chopped pork and let it cook with the lid on for another two minutes.

Add the beef (chopped and mince) and the parsley (about a cup of chopped parsley), giving it a good stir for two minutes to mix it up. Add 2 cups of consommé, 1 cup of water, the mustard and steak sauce and the tomato paste. Put the lid on and let it cook for 30 minutes on mid fire, periodically checking and stirring to prevent the stew to burn.

Referential image of the stew,
if you follow my recipe the end result will be more colourful and less chunky..
Image taken from http://blog.lolalobato.com 
Then the stew should start releasing all those beautiful smells, when you remove the lid you should get a not very strong bouquet of the beefy stew. Time to add the capers, 300 grams of olives (sliced in rings), bay leaves, wine and the paste of giardiniera (pickled vegetables). Again, stir it to mix in everything, put the lid on and let it cook for 10 minutes. 

Add the chopped tomatoes; stir a bit more (if you decided to add almonds, this is the right moment to add it). At this point you probably have a beefy stew which you could start adjusting the salt and pepper to then let it reduce at low fire. DO NOT PUT BACK THE SPOON IF IT TOUCHED YOUR MOUTH (again, you will have to believe me on this unless you want a very long explanation), the best way to try the stew will be to pour half spoon into a plate, let it cool and then try it. At this point the stew should be 30 to 45 minutes away to be ready. If you have plenty of liquids after that time, you could extract some of it using a clean cup (do not throw away this liquid as you are going to use it later on).


Tip: remember to stir every now and then to prevent burning the stew.


Making the dough
I am tired already and I am just typing the recipe...

As you might have guessed, while the stew is finishing up its cooking process, you could start preparing the dough!

But I will have to write a detour for some of you... 
If you have annatto, you will have to heat up the amount of oil is described below, then to that hot oil you will add the annatto (7 or 8 table spoons for each litre).
If you don’t have annatto, don’t heat up the oil; just use it as is because later on we will add the paprika and saffron.
End of detour.

Pour 5 to 6 cups of consommé, two cups of oil, one cup of water and some of that delicious liquid you extracted from the stew (just liquid, if it has chucks remove the chucks before pouring the liquid) into a bowl.
With your hands, mix up all the liquids and start gradually adding the cornmeal; you must keep it consistent all the time, if you find lumps stop adding the cornmeal and massage the mixture to regain control of the homogenous mass (BUHUHAHAHAHA! you are creating Frankenstein monster!). The mixture must feel sticky without watery bits. If you feel is getting dry add more consommé (or water) and more oil (for each consommé cup you should add ¾ of a cup of oil). Add liquid as you need to, keeping the ratio water/oil, do not add the entire cup straight away since you will have to get to the right balance between sticky soft mass and dense paste (you don’t want to eat play dough).

Keep adding the cornmeal until you have added the two kilos (remember to keep adding liquids as you go). At the end add one table spoon of sugar (sweet and salty flavours always play nicely).

Tip: My mom used to use the right balance was ‘if you take a ball of it in your hand, turn it to face the dough. The ball should not leave your hands yet it has to be a little bit soft.’

Back on a detour.
If you added the annatto to the oil, at this moment your dough should be bright yellow. Don’t do anything else until the next step.


If you don’t have annatto, at this moment your dough should be light cream or whitish (although if you used the yellow cornmeal you might get a different yellow tone); so we are going to add two tea spoons of saffron (imitation, do not use the real saffron as you will expend a lot of money!) and 2 spoons of paprika powder and mix it up a bit more. The dough should be bright yellow now.
End of second detour.

Finally, we have to rectify the salt. Because we have a lot of dough we will have to start adding a full table spoon (of salt, obviously) to the mixture. Once is incorporated into the dough give it a taste, you should get a grainy texture of corn-something-like-chicken-and-another-weird-flavour-product-of-the-awesome-liquid-you-added kind of taste. If is a bit pleasant and you like the flavour then you are spot on. If not adjust a bit more the salt until you get it.

Tip: always start with little salt while you are adjusting. It will be extremely difficult to remove the salt once you have added it. If you like, try some of the dough before adding any salt; the dough will need some salt anyway because the cornmeal masks some of its flavour.


Putting it all together.
The moment to combine the dough, the stew and the plantain leaves has come. 

Take one plantain leaf and spray a bit of oil on its centre (prevents the dough to stick to the leaf).

Make a ball of dough (about 8 centimetres in diameter) and place it in the middle.

With a chopping table wrapped in plastic cling, flatten the ball with the table until you get a pancake like shape. It must be close to three millimetres thin; thinner than that and it will be very difficult to get out of the leaves, thicker than that and you will be having a fat Hallaca with the filling on one side. The ball should be by now a 22 to 25 centimetres yellow dish on a plantain leaf.

Place one to one and half table spoon portions of stew in the middle of the pancake. Be aware you must try to leave as many beef stock (or the beefy liquid) out of the Hallaca as possible.

Decorate the stew in the middle with one onion ring, one or two olives, one red capsicum strip, 5 to 6 raisins, a bit of the chopped bacon and one chicken strip.

I am not going to be a critic of the image...
but just take it as reference to put together all the components.
Image taken from http://chubeza.com

Now one tough part, wrapping it.

I am not going to write the full explanation of this process because it will be extremely difficult to explain without a visual representation, here is a video someone prepared earlier.


I do not use that technique because is a terrible waste of leaves and if you have cooked the plantain leaves as I told you before when you start folding the leave it won’t crack.

As you fold the Hallaca be aware of the fibre, fold it following the same lines made by the veins on the leaf. Then gently compact the content by pressing your hands on each side towards the middle and finish up ‘the present’. You will need some cord to tie it down so the next stage goes perfect.

Cooking it again.
You are now close to taste it! 

Take a batch of hallacas (depends on the size of your steam cooker); lay down certain number of hallacas in your cooker and let it cook for 40 to 45 minutes, this will seal the dough and preserve everything in it.

Once done, let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting it open as the cooked dough is fragile after those 45 minutes. Don’t worry; it will get tougher after an hour or two.

The hallaca will not expire as fast as other type of meals because of its multiple layers of plantain leaves and the dense dough. But you will have to store it in the fridge if you want to eat it in the next couple of weeks or in the freezer if you are planning a longer term for its consumption.

Serving it is easy if you are careful; once the hallaca is hot, cut the cords and unfold the plantain leaves. Then eat the dough with its filling (do not eat the leaves).

If the hallaca is cold (most likely to be after refrigeration) heat it up using steam for 5 to 10 minutes or sprinkle some water on it and nuke it (whack it in the microwave for 2 minutes) then serve.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy! 

Hope you like my mom’s recipe, enjoy it!

Cheers.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Yet another blog has died

2 Comments Published by Rod


In the next few words (or paragraphs) I will try to explain in my point of view why some blogs die and why you should not be upset about it. I understand the feeling and that is why I am writing down some of my digested thoughts.

Ever since I started reading blogs (mostly from people whom I have not met until later) I wondered what kind of motives they would have to write it down and then publish it?

Why these people share their thoughts in such a personal way in an open media such as the Internet?

That is the question.
Image taken from creativeeducation.co.uk

When I started Uni (at the end of the 90s) I was the kind of guy who was totally comfortable being anonymous; my facebook was closed to everyone except those very few close friends (although facebook as much much later) as well as my IM or any other type of contact. In other words, I was the most asocial person you could probably meet. But that never stopped me of being curious, frequently checking the Internet for interesting and appealing stuff with my rampant 128kbps modem (translation for the new generation that was the fastest broadband you could get at that moment, at least in Venezuela).

One of the first blog I started reading frequently (by adding it to my bookmarks) was in 2003 and those posts were written from Florida, by a photographer on his mid fifties who decided it was about time to retire and take lovely pictures of kids buying ice cream, eating lollies or running around in playgrounds, which at the time was a big deal with lots of paedophiles on the loose and people complaining about strangers taking pictures on public places. I guess he was trying to protest or argue with control freaks, more than fighting with angry and concern parents... 

He used to post every Friday or Saturday about his life and how society had changed on the last 30 years in Florida, but after a while the blog posts stopped; very few people were following him (or understood the concept of virtually follow someone) and 16 months later, his blog was shut down by his son with a final and explanatory paragraph indicating a fatal blow to his father’s heart; it was just out of the blue. Not long after, the blog was deleted from wordpress and with it, the incredible tales of his author. The content of the blog and the blog itself died with his author.
Image taken from andrewcaldwell.org

At that time I was reading more and more blogs, each of them with different topics; from silly poetry to music, videogames and software development.

There was one in particular I remember the most; it was themed on cakes and desserts, called Caroline’s Cakes blog... but in reality the blog talked about anything but cakes and it was a way to vent different situations in her life (business decisions, life, friends, etc), and the reason of why I remember this blog in particular was because I always felt ashamed of reading it in public with its bright pink and yellow pastel colours and corky midi music in the background, which by the way made its way to the internal speakers of the computer, at loud in the laboratory; it happened once and I said it was one of those frigging pop-ups and I was trying to kill it... yet no one believed me.
But somehow I felt connected to her; connected as if I was her close friend like if I knew her, her thoughts, her way of writing and her silly jokes.

That is one of the many reasons why I felt offended when she decided it was about time to move onto different things, closing down her site and erasing her blog without warning, excuse or the expected ‘that is all folks’ sort of thing; she just closed her blog. To me it was a ‘facebook un-friend’ sort of deal, where someone just decides to take you out of their lives. But who the bloody hell was I? She knew nothing about me! Not even a single peep; never left her a comment or let her know I was reading her gobbledygook. There was no reason for me to be upset, and yet I felt she killed it.


Why would she dare to share feelings and mood to total strangers? 
How did she realise that is better to keep her life to herself after almost two years of constant bickering
When did that happen? 
And why did she remain silent when she had followers and cyber friends?

There was a missing piece in my puzzle, why would someone take the effort of opening their world, putting it into words and writing it down then close that chapter in their life and pretend it never happened?


Radicalised on not spending more time reading someone else useless mumbling I decided to stick to just tech blogs. It was the safest approach as very few IT people, writing down code and ‘best practices’ decides to shutdown their blog to do more entertaining things. 
Let’s face it, we communicate better with a keyword than with our mouth.

But my radical solution started to fall apart as I took the decision of leave Venezuela behind to move somewhere else, making our mind to choose our destination and familiarise with the culture of our soon-to-be home; reason enough to invoke the-daemons-who-find-it-all and browsed for hours any related story about Australia, filling up my head with more stuff than I could possibly remember, keeping me busy and distracted from many problems and situations of Venezuela.

It was amazing how much people have had shared when it comes to migrating to Australia. Is at that moment when you realise it does not matter the differences of culture as long as you find something in common to start a conversation, which later on leads you to friendship.
Sadly enough, very few of all those blogs were active; in fact, half the blogs were already dead! And the cause of death seemed to be Australia (arriving to it or settling in it), causing the flow on entries to dwindle for several months until total stop or the expected ‘we are going to close/end/finish blogging, it was a lovely experience but... [insert-excuse-here]’ blog post.



Could not understand why it happens. I could not possibly understand it because I was not living in Australia and the blog was an escape pod from the atrocious reality of Venezuela.

But you know, eventually I got my visa, moved here and started my life all over again and after a year of adaptation I begun to understand the motives behind the desertion of those moving to Australia.
It was like meeting with an old acquaintance whom you have not seen for a very long time: Greetings, profuse conversation about family, parents, exes (strangely enough someone will ask you about that someone who everyone knows but him/her should not be named), business or bad decisions in life and that is. End of the conversation, both parties look awkwardly to the sides and cheers goodbye.

You just ran out of conversation topics.

Of course, you could mention any funny anecdote of sometime ago but you don’t want to delay the inevitable... So you stay quiet, tapping your glass to make the other one a bit more uncomfortable to then say ‘hey, there is Mary! Has been so long since we talked! Let me check her out!’ Ending the conversation without the nasty and impolite ‘I think we don’t have anything else to talk about... off you go!’

Yes, we know... Mary was part of the plan all along. She was your escape pod from that dangerous situation of uncomfortable silence. You told her to stay there and call you out or wave hello in case you started looking to your right and left. Or even better, you just had enough beer and have to go to the loo.

Finally I was getting it, why blogs were dying! I was not because the authors decided to regain privacy of their lives... It was because they got to the point where they would have to share the private details of their mind and lives, the little details they were hiding all the time and all of the sudden, without any new source of events will be forced to share their precious intimate moments!

So the best tactic to apply is run for Mary or escape to the loo, killing the already dying blog.

To those who gets angry at the authors (like I did) whom leave their blogs in a painful state of abandonment, this post is for you. Learn to forgive and move on.

To those who decided to abandon their blogs. Respect your readers and send them one final post. Dolphins would say ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ although the mundane crowd won’t understand it. Eventually it will be appreciated.

As you might notice by now... my blog is not dying given the amount of gibberish I just wrote.

If makes sense, good onya!
If it doesn't, eventually you will get there.

Until the next time.

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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Harina-what?

3 Comments Published by Rod

A couple of days ago I met a Venezuelan couple in the street and they asked me if I knew where they could find ‘Harina-PAN’...
Harina PAN package. 

If you are not Venezuelan or Colombian you might be thinking... ‘What the hell harina-pan is?’

Harina stands for flour and PAN stand for ‘Producto Alimenticio Nacional’ or national foodstuff. Is corn based flour widely used in Venezuela to make ‘Arepas’ (toasted bread alike), ‘Hallacas’ (tamales alike) and bollos (again... tamales alike)... Colombians used it as well but the same purpose (ish).

FreshCO Fruit Market in Hornsby.
This product can be found in FreshCO Fruit Markets, in NSW; or in Woolworth in the city. If you want to try one Arepa and you have found ‘Mazeca’, ‘Harina PAN’, ‘Mazarepa’ or similar corn based flour, here is the recipe of how to make Arepas.

Ingredients

  • One (1) cup of corn flour (Harina PAN).
  • Half (1/2) tea spoon of salt. Or three good pinches
  • One (1) to one and half (1 ½) cups of water.
  • Anything as stuffing... Meat, Cheese, chicken, whatever.


Cook
Take one cup of water and put it in a bowl with your salt and mix it up. Then start powdering the flour into the bowl trying to get it really smooth.

One all the flour has absorbed all the water (around 5 minutes later the mixing process) you can check the consistency; must be soft yet firm enough to make dough balls in your hands (half tennis balls size). If the dough is too hard and crumbles, needs more water.

Flatten it with your hand, trying to get something round of 1 cm of thickness and then put it in a pan with a little bit a butter (... veeeery little, is not meant to be fried) and cook it using low flames... It might take around 10 minutes to be cooked.

You need every own and then to take it with your hands, hitting it gently. If it makes a drum alike sound (like hollow inside) is ready, otherwise need more time in the pan.

Once is ready, split it open by the edges and put whatever you want inside... A really common stuffing is cheese with some butter.

An arepa stuffed with cheese should look like this
Yummy isn't? 
Enjoy it

=)

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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Venezuelans and Australians...

1 Comments Published by Rod

I have been checking my blog visit logs and I have found some interesting topic made to Google and forwarded to me related to...

Hahaha, well... not precisely. I know the questions
is not related to crazy love...
But you got to admit, the image is nice.

Do Venezuelans love for Australians?

In general, yes. Venezuelans are weird as people and I am not saying it as a negative note. Our culture is pretty weak in comparison to most of the Australians and thus, we feel curiosity about their culture, their manners and experiences. We love (in most of the cases) the Australian accent and somehow we would like to have it, but without losing that exotic ‘thing’ we have.

Now, if anyone was asking about actual ‘love’ I have found that we enjoy blending with Australians (or to be honest, with anyone who’s not Venezuelan as the matter of fact but those whom are already married).

What I have seen?
At least two friends are in serious relationships with Australians and some acquaintances (single or divorced) are married/dating Australians.

Yeah, maybe the image is off topic... but I love Australia so much ^.^
And I think it was brilliant to put it in here based that I am
writing about Venezuelans and Australians... The girl has an Australian flag
as shirt, but her hair, shirt and heart contains in the exact order
the colours of my hometown's flag.
So yeah, I can say Venezuelans enjoy Australians (as friends or partners). Or at least that is my perception...

What do you thing?

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Last days in Venezuela

2 Comments Published by Rod

These posts are a compilation of every aspect of moving, packing and farewell every migrant will suffer when its time is right. With this I would like to express the stress and exhaustion of the last month getting ready for what awaits.

The last days are split into these separate posts, read it as you wish or follow the order:

Thanks for reading, and till next time.

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Last days, getting yellow card – Finally

0 Comments Published by Rod

--
This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.
--

You might be thinking “god rod not again the story of your 5 shots in the arm…” and I am not going to recapitulate how painful it was.


The important thing is how to get the yellow card so you can travel without any but nor complain. We called the sanity department requesting directions to where, when and how to go. With clear directions and regular vaccine history in our hands we marched to the sanity department general office in “Centro Simon Bolivar”, Caracas, Venezuela and asked the board, we were sent to the 4th floor general and public epidemiology department.

There, we were requested to show our airplane bookings (to check the traveling dates) because they were only attending to those within 30 days prior to travel (bring your bookings, just in case you are requested to show it). Thanks goodness the receptionist was willing to generate the card and accept our 35 days prior traveling as 30. In that moment, you are called for examination and in case you don’t have the influenza vaccine or the yellow fever vaccine you are going to be dismissed in order to get it. Important note: the sanity department doesn’t provide any vaccine to general public; you must go there “with your vaccine already in your regular history”, also double check your history (and the yellow fever vaccine), otherwise you will be requested to go somewhere else to get it first. In the examination you are told to get the influenza vaccine as well in order to avoid any further problem with the H1N1 spreading all over the country.


It is also important to remark, check your vaccines histories, Kathy had an issue with her card as her history does not mention the vaccine batch applied to her, so she had to go and get a brand new shot in her arm. The yellow fever shot could be applied at least every 10 years but it really doesn’t matter if you get it twice in a year, avoid 40 days vaccines prior travelling, for us this would be a problem (because we would be short of days) but the doctor told us not to worry because she had a shot before.

This section advice, bring the information needed to prove you are traveling outside the country limits and the destination request the yellow card in immigration; in some countries such as Venezuela, this card is something very unusual, thus some doctors or receptionist will look for excuses to not give it to you.

Next, packing.

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Last days, planning a trip.

0 Comments Published by Rod

--
This post is part of a bigger compilation of thoughts and thus, it might have no sense or lead to miss information. If you want to fully read it, start from here, otherwise continue reading.
--


Something important of moving anywhere else is getting ready to the upcoming changes; weather is one of those big changes anyone would suffer. Thus Kathy and I were checking every now and then the weather forecast for a whole year and we already knew that august in Sydney is cold because of the winter, then for a moment or so I remembered the 2000 summer Olympics on Sydney (celebrated on September) when a sports reporter took a chance to review a Venezuelan and his only couple of words were “man, here is freezing!”.

I must confess, at that time I didn’t know or even thought about moving down under. But it got to my attention that a huge desert as Australia could have low temperatures, so I tried to check the Internet to find out more and was my first time to know that Australia has the four seasons, it has snow in some mountains and also has tropical monsoons at the very north.

The idea of arriving to Australian land, looking as ice cube didn’t like me too much, so we figured to buy some winter clothes, blankets, quilts and the list goes on and on. After a long listing of stuffs, we went to the only store in Caracas which could have anything alike just to find out it was extremely expensive; another solution must be found, maybe to somewhere colder than Venezuela, but where? The only nearest place to Venezuela with cold weather could be Bogota in Colombia.

I should say something here, you might be thinking “rod, are you out of your mind? How could be any cheaper to travel to another country to get stuff instead just trying harder in your own country?” and you might be right, it should be cheaper to take a deep look if you are talking about a regular basis economy. But in Venezuela things work different, every Venezuelan has a limited access to foreign currencies such as American dollars, these limitations also applies to companies, thus a parallel market to acquire dollars exist in which the American dollar is valued 2.5 to 3 times more than the government admits, plus 90% of the products consumed within the country for daily operations is based on imported merchandise. As consequence, every single good in a store / market / shop tags a price with is 400% inflated related to the same product bought in the US or other country. If you sum the expenses of traveling outside Venezuelan borders + the good price (if you buy big contents, not just two things) you will be having more things and you traveled somewhere else and get to know something.

So, back to the travel, the thing was getting to Bogota, make the arrangements for a cheap hotel or hostel, and acquire the knowledge of where to shop. At that very moment, an angel falls to my sight. Alex, a mate and moderator from my forum ‘aussie neighbour’ emerged from the nowhere giving some directions and offering me some stay for few days.


Once everything was set and ready to go, we went to an online travel agency named “despegar.com” (take-off.com in Spanish) and shopped two tickets headed to Bogota. With the tickets and everything ready, we went to CADIVI (the Venezuelan responsible for releasing dollars to the market) in order to get the approval in our credit cards so we can buy our clothes.

The train seemed to be unstoppable until an issue occurs.

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