How to make Hallacas or why you should just pay the 7 guilders in the supermarket....

We had the brilliant idea to 'be cultural' about Christmas in Holland this year. Last time we were in Zeeland, Oom Milo and I thought that we could make the typical Venezuelan dish, that has become a Antillean staple. My father calls these his 'survival kits' and stocks the freezer every year.

A good ayaka (hallaca) is quite expensive and they get more and more expensive every year. On my mother's side of the family, the sisters get together and make these bananaleaf packets, which is usually lots of fun. I guess when you are little you have no sense of time....if they did it in one evening....

So Oom Milo and I, who both like a culinair challenge, thought: we could do that. A date was set, Carol was also invited and we started gathering the ingredients.

The first challenge was to find a good recipe. There are so many different kinds of ayakas, you could fill them with whatever you want.

The key ingredients were bananaleaves, yellow corn meal, a spice called onotto, and for the filling whatever you prefer + prunes, green peppers, onions, capers and olives.

We chose a meat and chicken filling. The spice onotto ( now known as oh, no -tto) gives the dough its particular yellow color and taste. Many phonecalls and trips to the most obscure 'toko's' later we had what we needed.

On the particular day I woke up at 6:00, to pick up Kwek at 7:30. After waking her up we drove of to Zeeland, where we woke up Oom Milo too. Apparently people think I'm kidding when I say I'll be there at 7:30 and 9:00 on a Saturday....to cook....

Anyway, we had a recipe for 50 ayacas. I had bought the leaves and Kwek was put to work cutting them up to size. The leaves had to be washed, and at this point we were already reconsidering our very ambitious target of 50. After washing the 10th leave I had lost all feeling in my fingers and I was wet to my knees. So we decided to go for 30 ayakas.

After changing into a pair of pants of Oom Milo, we started on the filling. The recipe called for onotto oil. Guys, if you ever try this out for yourself, skip this step. You have to warm the oil and let the seeds steep. The problem is, the smell......oh the smell......the whole house, our clothes and everything we had with us, smelled of Oh-no-tto. It doesn't stink, it just smells like a cheap curry restaurant.....for days.....

By now it was 13:00h and the ayaka count was still 0. The target count by now: 25. We followed the recipe for the stew filling, but it was not looking very tasty.

Hmm, not quite the way I have ever seen an ayaka filled before....But hey, it tasted ok, so we moved on to the masa (dough). This had to be made with lard (pig's fat). And if you thought the smell of onoto was bad to stick to your hair, try melting that....Oom Milo knows now, why Venezuelans don't live long.

At around 14:30 we started with the stuffing conveying belt. By now we were proud that we did not give up. Our aim: 10 ayakas.

To make a long story short: I got home at 20:30 that night, with 3 ayakas in my bag and it took me 3 days to soak the smell out of my hair and bags. We had a total of 15 ayakas, it took 3 people 9 hours to make them.

Joris and I ate the ayakas yesterday and they were good!! We lived to tell, so it was not just the taste.