Coffee, cacao and ants

What would you think when the first message you receive in the morning says, "I swallowed an ant in the morning!"? The first thing that may come to your mind is that the sender yawned wide and accidentally swallowed an ant or some other insect before opening her eyes in the morning. To be honest, even though the sender of the message was Özge Samancı, the head of the Department of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts at Özyeğin University, I didn't realize that she was tasting ants as a gastronomic experience. I inevitably thought that this is what happened to her while yawning before she even drank her coffee. However, she really tasted Amazon ants from the hand of José Bracho Reyes, the ambassador of Venezuela, a keen cook and a dedicated promoter of Venezuelan cuisine. She later admitted that she was a bit hesitant, but when Defne Ertan Tüysüzoğlu, the director of Le Cordon Bleu in Istanbul, jumped in with great enthusiasm, she had to taste the ants. The rest of the message was about the taste and it was short: Lemony!

That reminded me that ants’ eggs are highly acidic, and they were used to crack open hard caper seeds to sprout. Apparently, it is not only the eggs but the whole insect that has that tangy acidic quality to it. The ant-tasting adventure took place at a cooking workshop by Venezuelan chef Victor Moreno who was visiting Türkiye for a series of events focusing on Venezuelan gastronomy on the occasion of Venezuela's national day. Venezuela is a distant country. We are not familiar with its culture and cuisine. It is a country that has a completely different geography with different ingredients and flavors. When I say different flavors, do not think that every food is as alien to us as eating ants. On the contrary, surprisingly we have certain shared tastes. Unexpectedly there are even traces of Ottoman geography in its cuisine. I discover that when I meet chef Victor Moreno at Pera Palas to talk about Venezuelan cuisine. He explains that their cuisine is based on three pillars. Latin, native American and African. But that is not all. Spanish and Portuguese influences are mingled with the South American native culture which makes the dominant base, but there are also African flavors and ingredients that came with slaves. This trio forms the basis of Venezuelan cuisine, i.e. a mix of local indigenous culture, African and Spanish. Later on, immigration from different countries left its mark, especially the Italian influence is strong. There is also a wave coming from the Eastern Mediterranean, migrations from the former Ottoman lands, today's Lebanon and Syria, which have left their mark on the cuisine. Ottoman-era immigrants are called Turcos, meaning Turks. Interestingly, there is even a significant Sephardic Jewish culture that came from former Ottoman territory. To add to the rich multi-cultural cornucopia there were also immigrants from India. An interesting mixed culinary culture emerges from the blend of all of them. On the one hand, there are flavors as strange and foreign as ants, on the other hand, flavors very close to our taste form the basis of their cuisine. 

After talking about the different cultural influences in Venezuelan cuisine, the topic turns to typical Venezuelan products. Corn, which came to our lands after the discovery of America, is one of the Venezuelan flavors familiar to us. But of course, they have so many different varieties of maize completely unknown to us which are used with very different techniques. One familiar taste is “Arepa” made from white corn flour, which is very similar to our flatbread but made with wheat flour in our country. Being one of the most typical tastes of Venezuela arepa is cut in half, filled with all kinds of stuffing and eaten like a sandwich. The filling can be anything from shredded meat to black beans and grated fresh white cheese. Arepas can be baked or fried, when fried they resemble “pişi” in our cuisine, which is like a fried flatbread. Making arepas used to be a very laborious process because corn was ground and roasted at home, but it is now easy because of a technique developed by Venezuelan engineer Luis Caballero Mejías in the 1950s that introduced ready-made arepa flour to the market. This made it easier to make not only arepas but also other typical corn-based tastes of Venezuelan cuisine, such as hallaca, cachapa, bollo and empanadas. Hallaca is made by rolling the corn mixture like a burrito, wrapping it in a plantain leaf, a type of banana, and steaming it. Plantain is another taste we do not have in our country, it is a type of banana that is not eaten raw, and when it is fried thinly like chips, it is addictive, one cannot stop eating. Fried plantain slices are one of the four main components of the “Pabellón Criollo” plate, which is considered the national dish of Venezuela, alongside rice, black beans and shredded meat.

Venezuela is also all about chocolate and coffee. The country produces very high-quality cocoa and coffee. Ambassador Reyes is working hard to introduce these products to Türkiye. One thing I discovered during his passionate mission in introducing Venezuelan tastes was he himself is a keen cook. Years ago when he was stationed in Istanbul, he took cooking classes at the ICI Istanbul Culinary Institute which used to be in Pera, alas now closed, and became a student of chef Fehmi Samancı. He is very aware of the importance of ingredients. On their national day, he served delicacies made with Criollo cacao, one of the most special varieties in the world. Last week, he was present at the opening of Cabra Loca café in Istanbul, which brews Venezuelan coffee beans with special techniques and served coffee to the guests personally. With this short introduction to Venezuelan cuisine, one can say that Venezuelan flavors are both is both familiar and distant to our culture. But the truth is, after a week-long introduction to the cuisine of their country, it is actually the sincere efforts of chef Victor Moreno and Ambassador Reyes that we feel closer to this distant country, practically on the other side of the globe. With their warm smiles, their excitement and passion in introducing their cuisine they performed a truly memorable showcase of gastro-diplomacy making all guests cheer Viva Venezuela!