Huelva Shmuelva

Jesusa just left town for good, having handed in her Master’s thesis at the University of Huelva. Because this is unspeakably depressing, I will instead discuss how she came over last Sunday and taught me how they make arepas in her motherland of Colombia. (I have this grand idea of becoming an arepas master this summer, with the hope that my perfectly golden patties will charm others into befriending me. For the sake of Oblivious Future Annie who is re-reading this entry in a Massachusetts kitchen, I will outline each step.)

Head to the supermarket, and purchase a bag of precooked, ground corn flour, checking that it was produced in Colombia — Doñarepa or Masarepa will do. Nope, I couldn’t believe that this was stocked at my local Carrefour either.

Dump two cups into a large bowl, sprinkling in a touch of salt. By the way, if you are an American friend reading this, I will certainly make you arepas this summer if so desired, in an effort to live by the “practice makes perfect” maxim.

Add a hunk of butter to the mixture (Jesusa prefers margarine), as well as some hot water that’s on the verge of boiling. 

I’m sorry, Oblivious Future Annie, but we have a brief interruption. Okay, so I was chatting about arepas with my friend Sofia, who lives in Bogotá with her boyfriend Cesar: 

Paula Deen, is that you? Sofia likes to mix in a fresh cheese called cuajada that she says “tastes like feet but in an arepa it’s heaven.” What a domestic goddess she’s become.

Back to the recipe! Knead the ingredients together…

…until it forms one dense, clean mound that includes every possible tidbit of dough.

This next step is most enjoyable: roll the dough into small balls, cookie dough-style. In fact, their coloring bears an uncanny resemblance to that of sugar cookies.

Place a ball into a plastic bag. Jesusa informed me that professional cooks in Colombia have special plastic bags designed for the task of arepa-making, but sadly we had to use one of my old fruit carriers from the grocery store.

Flatten that bad boy. I like to push ‘em down real hard, as thinness is positively correlated with subsequent crunchiness.

While the dough is safely encased within the plastic, use a cup to make them into lovely circles. (This step is optional. It’s just that Jesusa prefers them with neat edges, as do I.) When I get back to the States, I want to make arepas in the shape of animals and stars and whatever other cookie-cutter shapes I can get my hands on. 

Throw those discarded borders back into the mixing bowl. Repeat again and again with each ball.

Drizzle not-that-much oil onto a non-stick pan. I had been expecting tankloads. 

At first, your darlings will look like this, all pale and virginal:

And you’ll know it’s time to flip them over when their bottoms start looking like this:

While they’re cooking, start preparing your hogao by chopping up one kilo of ripe tomatoes and half an onion. This is the sauce that will go on top of your arepas, although I could eat bowls of it alone.

Cook the onions first.

Stir in the tomatoes.

After quite awhile, it will transform into this stewy mush that is so delicious that Karen was surprised that it only contained tomatoes and onions.

Well, that’s it. Although relatively simple, the process is also time-consuming. I hope you didn’t mess it up, Oblivious Future Annie. 

Again, more revolting photographs of half-eaten food. You’re welcome!

Every time I question my decision to have moved to Spain - man, I should really stop that masochistic habit - I’m like, “Yeah, but at least I got to travel a lot.” My trips away are what I will remember most about this year. In fact, I’ve come up with a metaphor about this very feeling: I have a sandwich of uninspired Wonder Bread (Huelva), yet it is made palatable by its delicious and varied fillings (Córdoba, Granada, Palma del Río, Seville, Morocco, France, Portugal, Italy, Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Zaragoza, and counting). Nonetheless, I find it near impossible to sit my ass down and write about these these travels. I mean, I haven’t even mentioned how I fell in love with Madrid last month. 

David Livingstone once wrote, “It is far easier to travel that to write about it,” to which I reply, “Hear, hear!” Traveling is jam-packed with sightseeing and emotions and meals and strangers, such that the task of blending and compressing these various strands into one coherent narrative is exceedingly difficult. And that’s too bad because, as Willie Morris said, “It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.” Shit. How will I make my experiences last if I never jotted them down? My memory ain’t that good. Thus, in an effort to retain these recollections which are slipping away as I type, I shall force myself to write a bit about San Sebastián today. God, this really feels like pulling teeth. Okay, here goes:

No, I can’t. I don’t know how to do this. There was a beach in the middle of the city, it had a posh ambience, and I ate a pistachio-béchamel croquette. That is truly all I can manage.

Prior to even landing, I had felt preinclined to become fond of Bilbao merely because its name ends in “-ao.” I think that this early affinity resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy: I loved Bilbao before I loved Bilbao. A couple of friends have told me - on two separate occasions - that I would have been happier this year had I lived in northern Spain. Indeed, I am far more Basque Country than Andalucía; lush vegetation and rainy days agree with me. “It’s like Lord of the Rings!” I cried when I spotted the mountains from the airport’s windows, not realizing until that very moment how much I had yearned for some greenery.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Spain, Andalucía is to Texas what Basque Country is to New York, both in terms of the weather and the inhabitants’ disposition. The former is regarded as the fun-loving, lazy counterpart to the serious, unfriendly latter. (I beg to differ that the people in the North were unfriendly, as the stereotype did not hold true in my experiences.) What I mean to convey is that they are quite distinct from each other — culturally, linguistically, culinarily, financially, etcetera.

Alba: “When are you leaving?”

Me, touched that she is clearly sad about my imminent departure from Huelva: “One week.”

Alba: “No, I meant when is this class over.”

Today I opened a door on my foot and tore off a swath of skin, causing the teachers at my school to crowd around my bleeding toe and gasp in horror. A kind doctor patched it up nicely in the teachers’ lounge. “That’s funny that I did that because I just slammed a door on my finger last month,” I said. “This will hurt even more,” he responded, suggesting that I stock up on anti-inflammatories. I went home early.

I’m pretty sure that this is karma for accidentally walking into my friend’s front door on Saturday night - thereby cracking its glass window - and suggesting that we lie to her landlord about who did it. By the way, don’t you think it’s adorable how clumsy I am? I’m just like The Klutz archetype featured in all romantic comedies: “The hundred-per-cent-perfect-looking female is perfect in every way except that she constantly bonks her head on things.” It’s my one endearing flaw, tee-hee.

Would you rather be vegan or never drink alcohol again?

Today a young man jokingly called me an alcoholic, and I started talking about how much I pity recovering alcoholics because they can never touch the stuff again. Then I asked him the above question, and much to my surprise, he chose the latter after a moment of contemplation. For me, it was a no-brainer: veganism all the way. He said it was a good question though, and I was like, “Oh my god, thanks!” I pride myself on coming up with tricky Would-You-Rather questions.

In honor of Mother’s Day this past week, I’d like to share a brief anecdote. Photo courtesy of Jakob Kotas:

Back in March, my dear friend David came to Huelva for the weekend. I was thrilled — so thrilled, in fact, that I do not remember much of that Saturday night. It seems like one moment we were calmly enjoying a tipple in Karen’s living room, and the next I was hearing a voice say, “Can someone please walk Annie home?” I suppose I’d become a bit overzealous. After David chivalrously fulfilled the request, we had a three-hour chat in my apartment about God knows what. I do recall that he showed me clips from Gran Torino and that I laughed at how outdated Clint Eastwood’s racial slurs were, e.g., “gook.” The other snippet that stuck with me was him encouraging me to invest in Whole Foods, though I couldn’t remember his explanation why. Nonetheless, remembering this advice the next morning, I promptly e-mailed my mother the following:

Yes, she likes to include clever quotes at the end of her e-mails. Anyways, she later gave me the password to her Charles Schwab account so I could play around with the stock market. I swear, this woman is impossible to nonplus. Her general response to my whims is this hands-off “Yeah, sure.” I feel like if I told her I were moving to Australia to open a zoo, she’d just nod her head and ask me if there’d be penguins there too. Maybe it has something to do with her Buddhist ways, but yeah, Betsy/Shuling is a chill lady. The Tiger Mother trope couldn’t be further from my own experience, and for that I am grateful.

I never did invest in Whole Foods, seeing as my attitude toward the stock market can be summed up by this quote from Fred Armisen: “I barely understand what the stock market even is. I may as well be 6 years old when it comes to this. When I see the stock exchange, it’s like, alien, and then people try to explain it to me and I check out and I’m like, ‘Ohhh, whatever, this sounds really complicated.’” Several weeks ago, I asked David why he had told me to put my money in an organic supermarket chain. I was curious if he had any insider information, given the fact that he is an accounting whiz. He was like, “It was a joke: I just became vegan, so I won’t be gorging on their free cheese samples anymore. Whole Foods will save all that money and do better.” Oh. The funny thing is that their stock has just reached an all-time high — he was right on target after all.