A few weeks back, you, the Serious Eats Community mentioned that you wanted to see some more coverage of Latin cuisines from the Americas South of Mexico. Well you spoke, and we listened. Check back each week for recipes from Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua, Peru, and beyond.
The first time I went to Colombia, my not-yet-wife warned me that I’d be eating arepas. A whole lot of them. What she didn’t prepare me for was the baffling array of styles they come in. If you’re like I was back then, you hear the word arepa, and you think “Oh, it’s that Venezuelan/Colombian corn cake, right?” And you probably have an image in your mind of a thick tortilla.
But to think in that narrow scope is the equivalent of a Colombian native hearing about bread and saying, “Oh, it’s that European wheat cake, right?” Within the first three days alone, I sampled over a dozen different varieties of arepa. The most basic in the Bogotá region are made with starchy white corn flour pressed into cakes about 1/4-inch thick, then griddled or grilled until cooked through, and served with butter, cheese, or hogao, a cooked mixture of onions and tomato.
