San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘Queen’ of holiday food brought by Venezuelan immigrants
HOUSTON — Venezuelan cookbooks call the “hallaca” the queen of Christmas food and December celebrations.
But for immigrants from the South American country, the hallaca symbolizes the flavor of the Venezuelan homeland they long for and celebrate in December with a special party to prepare the elaborate dish. Its popularity has grown in Houston and other parts of Texas and the United States with the increasing flow of Venezuelan immigrants in recent years.
“If you have to explain to a person who doesn’t know ‘what is a hallaca,’ the closest reference that most people understand here would be the Mexican tamal,” said chef Joel Eliaz, owner of the Venezuelan restaurant Tuttopane Bakery & Café in Katy.
However, Eliaz hurried to clarify that comparing hallacas to tamales is “like wounding Venezuelan’s patriotic love.” He explained that, technically, the hallaca is a pastel of cornmeal dough stuffed with a “guiso” or stew prepared with a mixture of meats, usually beef, chicken and pork. The pastel is then wrapped in banana leaves and boiled.
Technicalities aside, the hallaca is the food that best represents the melting pot that is the Venezuelan culture, he said. Its origin is traced to a combination of indigenous, African and Spanish ingredients that merged during Spanish colonial times.
The hallaca “is like an exemplary compendium of the process of miscegenation,” or cultural mixture, in the southern country, said the late Venezuelan writer and historian Arturo Uslar Pietri in his essay, “The hallaca as a history manual.”
With some variations by region, the recipe includes raisins and olives from the Romans and Greeks,
capers and almonds from the Arabs, meat from the cattle industry brought by Spaniards to the Americas, and corn and a banana leaf used by local native Americans and adopted by African slaves, he said. It is believed that the initial hallacas, or their immediate predecessor, were made by slaves adding leftovers from their owners’ kitchens to their regular cooked meals.
“It is a very laborious plate to prepare, but it tastes like tradition, like family from back home and here with us, it tastes like celebration,” said Eliaz, whose restaurant specializes in Venezuelan food.
Party with meaning
In a red brick house in Katy, an area that locals call “Katy-zuela” because of its large population of immigrants from Venezuela, Cesar Saldivia begins each December by planning the “hallacazo,” what Venezuelans call the annual party to make hallacas.
The Venezuela native and his
wife, Krista, who is from Michigan, met in college and moved to Katy in 2009. Shortly afterward, they began hosting annual hallacazos at their home. Before the pandemic, they would have gatherings of as many as 50 people, including extended family and friends at their house.
On a recent Friday, the Saldivias prepare the guiso, the filling that is cooked the day before the party.
In Venezuela, this stew is usually a family affair. “It’s cooked by grandma or the elder woman in the family, and the recipe is passed from generation to generation,” said Lisbeth Canga, a former Venezuelan journalist who coowns a studio production business in Houston.
The next day, Canga and her husband, Humberto Tancredi, are among those in attendance at the Saldivias party. Around 15 people begin taking roles to make the pastels in a sort of assembly line.
Some women in the kitchen prepare and wash banana leaves cut in rectangles. Others knead
the cornmeal with hen broth to make the dough. “You have to get the right consistency until it doesn’t stick to your hands,” said Bruna Colosio Collazo, as she busily tends to her task. The Brazilian is married to Venezuelan Alex Collazo, both friends of the hosts.
Then people take positions around a table and in the kitchen. Some make balls with the dough and crush them on the banana leaves, which are passed to others who fill them with stew and wrapping. Men frequently handle the last step, tying and boiling the hallacas.
The whole process is accompanied by drinks and music. By the end of the day, some 30 people were singing gaitas, aguinaldos y parrandas, the typical musical genres that Venezuelans play during the December holidays. They had made 130 hallacas, and everyone left the Saldivias’ party taking home a bag of a few of them, as is customary.
Families fill their freezers with hallacas from different hallacazos and eat them during December for dinner and often for breakfast.
On Christmas Eve, hallacas are the centerpiece of the meal served with ham bread, pork roast and chicken salad. A similar menu is repeated for New Year’s Eve.
“My wife is ‘gringa’ but she loves our culture,” said Cesar Saldivia.
“Yes,” said Krista. “We have combined cultures in our family, and we believe that it’s not right to prioritize one culture over the other,” she said.
On Christmas Eve, Krista said, they have a fun party a la Venezuelan with the typical food. “But on the 25th, we quiet down and share our turkey just with family, with our two kids, and ham and mashed potatoes and green beans.”
‘Like opening your heart’
A couple of decades ago, there weren’t Venezuelan restaurants in Houston or typical ingredients to prepare food from that country. But now, there are more than a dozen eateries serving Venezuelan food in Houston. Ingredients for hallacas can be found in many supermarkets catering to this community, although sometimes they may be harder to find during December with the increased demand.
At the table, the hallaca is worshipped like no other Venezuelan dish.
For Venezuelan immigrants, unwrapping a hallaca is “like opening your heart to the nostalgia of your country, your family and friends you left behind,” said Canga, who has written about this dish.
“The hallaca is delicious, but its meaning goes beyond food,” Canga said. “Cooking it with family and friends is to fill it with love; it’s a holiday gift that we (Venezuelans) bring wherever we migrate.”