It has definitely been a long time since the last post. There is a reason, or perhaps an excuse, as to why I hadn’t posted anything in a while. As you may recall, I had started this blog back in June 2011. The main reason for starting the blog back then was that I was living in Montgomery, Alabama and it was very hard to find Venezuelan food and ingredients, so I had to learn how to make them myself. I figured many Venezuelan expats were probably on the same boat, and that’s how it all began.
I moved back to Florida in 2012 and that is when the post’s frequency decreased. You see, in South Florida there are plenty of Venezuelan restaurants and markets where you can find all kinds of Venezuelan food and ingredients. With easy access to all of that and a demanding job, I had very little time to devote to this blog. Not to mention, my mom moved in with me and we were cooking delicious Venezuelan recipes almost every day.
I have been living in Omaha, Nebraska for the past 2 years. As you can imagine, I am back to missing and craving Venezuelan food and ingredients. There is only one Venezuelan restaurant and one Venezuelan food truck, and the Venezuelan ingredients are very hard to find, even in Hispanic food markets around town.
With the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, I was forced to take a week of unpaid vacation in June, and I decided to visit my sister who lives in a very small town in Illinois. She was also missing all her Venezuelan food favorites. So, we decided to make a few. I would like to obviously thank my sister for hosting the great-quarantine-Venezuelan-food-cookout-of-2020, where all the new recipes that I will be posting soon came from.
I am starting with an easy one, Papelón con Limón. I always found it odd that in Venezuela we call the green one limón, and here is called lime, instead of lemon. That’s why the title of this recipe might be confusing to some. Just to be clear, for this recipe whether I write lime or lemon, please know I mean the green one, not the yellow one. Papelón con limón is a very traditional Venezuelan drink. It is also known as Guarapo de papelón con limón, Panela con limón, Aguadulce, Raspadura, or Aguapanela. It is a kind of sweet lemonade. It is said that it comes from the old sugar cane mills that existed during the colonial time in Venezuela. This beverage was very popular during the emancipation battles in both the patriot and realist camps. Nowadays, people will have a big jug of it always available in the fridge to drink as a cold and refreshing thirst quencher, to offer guests, or to accompany any meal.
By now you must be thinking, what is papelón? Papelón is simply unrefined whole cane sugar. It is a solid brown block of whole cane sugar. There are many different names for it from different Latin American countries like Papelón, Panela, Rapadura, Chancaca, Piloncillo, Dulce de Panela, etc., but you can find it in most supermarkets in the Hispanic foods isle. One common mistake people make is thinking that papelón is the same as brown sugar. It is not. Papelón is a solid block of sucrose made from boiling and evaporating sugarcane juice. The sugar cane used to be extracted in those mills, then it was converted in some sort of syrup or caramel, which is then solidified in many different shapes. Brown sugar is just white refined sugar with a bit of molasses added back to it.
Some households in Venezuela always have grated papelón that they use instead of sugar to sweeten their coffee or anything else. Since papelón comes in a solid block form, people usually grate it and keep it already grated for using as a sweetener. You may find papelón is sold in many different shapes here in the US; a square block, a cone, a round block, or the ones we found pictured above. They are all the same, just shaped differently. Papelón is also used in many other traditional Venezuelan recipes like Asado Negro and Golfeados.
What you need:
– 1 or 2 blocks of papelón, grated
– 2 Whole limes, juiced
– 1 ½ Liters of water
– Ice
Preparation:
1. In a large enough pitcher add the drinking water.
2. Add the juice of 2 whole limes.
3. Add the grated papelón.
4. Stir until the papelón is fully dissolved.
5. Serve over ice in a tall glass.
Note: There are other more traditional and complicated recipes where you boil the solid block of papelón until it dissolves and let it cool, and then add the lime juice and pour over ice. Some other recipes state to let the entire block of papelón dissolve in the water first, before you add the lime juice and ice and you have to strain it, but that seems like it would take forever. This recipe is simpler, since we grate the papelón before using it, making it a lot easier to dissolve.
Venezuelan Cooking 