Carne Mechada! Celebrating Venezuela and the winds of change!

I’m sure not most of you out there know about what’s happening in Venezuela. I keep my blog politics free. I’ll make an exception tonight. I will admit that I am EXTREMELY happy with the outcome of the last national assembly elections back home. I hope the 2 parties (winners and losers) figure out a way of working together to get this country out of the sink hole it currently is in.

A little context. The current economic and social crisis in the country has transformed Venezuela into one of the most violent places on the planet (sometimes more dangerous than countries that are at war). If you care to know, it also has the highest inflation rate of all the countries in the world today. This wasn’t the case 16 years ago. I hope good things are in store for the future of this beautiful country. I’m gonna celebrate it with a simple recipe that I love making and I definitely love eating. Carne Mechada!

 

Carne Mechada. One of the most popular Venezuelan dishes I know (I’m sure every country has their own version of shredded beef). It’s not Christmas yet, so I won’t bring up hallacas which is my all time favorite Venezuelan dish. I’ve made it off season it’s that good. Please don’t tell anyone, it’s kind of a heresy. 

Savory Galette. Beef + Peppers + Leeks

Finally back with some decent time to do some cooking, take some pics and blog it all! (sadly the rest of the year will be pretty inconsistent blogging wise) Told my friends I’d be making ratatouille for dinner this weekend. I also told them I would be baking it in a flaky quick puff pastry crust.  Side B of Plan A worked. Finding eggplant and zucchini in Vancouver this time of the year… forget it.  The most beautiful beets and leeks though. Anyways. I was still able to find awesome bell peppers. I scratched my rat plans and decided to let my carnivore instinct dictate the shopping list. I’ve made meat pies in the past but I usually use pizza dough, or traditional short crusts. I have an empanadas recipe on the blog that use a similar crust to the one I made tonight.

The photographic beauty of a galette is hardly matched by other baked goods (true, pizzas easily compete here. Yes, the mighty croissant of course) and I haven’t made a galette before. For the record. I don’t even know if a galette can be stuffed with savoury things. I also don’t know if quick puff pastry belongs in an official french certified galette. I’ll let me french cuisine connoisseurs enlighten me. When I was done, it looked like a galette, and most importantly,  it tasted like heaven.