Oh. my. God. I think I’ve just died and gone to Heaven. I, through sheer luck, stumbled on a combination of different flavors that are absolutely sublime. By themselves they aren’t stellar, but the way this all came together – I must have more. Must. It might just be a subjective thing, but this combination of sweet and savory just rocked my world.
First, I made Linda from Kayaksoup’s recipe for Crock Pot Carnitas that she blogged about a while back. Absolutely amazing. Moist. Fork tender. Flavorful. You can’t tell there was ever beer in there, all the ingredients melded together in perfection. While this would have been delicious alone, or even with some tortillas, I was feeling sort of inspired.
So I had been planning on making a recipe for Tamale Corn Cakes that I had seen in Cuisine at Home magazine, but while searching through my freezer, I had come across a box of frozen arepas stuffed with cheese (I had thought they were Goya, but a search of the Goya web site doesn’t show frozen arepas, and I’ve already threw away the box) that I purchased at Jungle Jims near Cincinnati a while back. I figured it would make more sense to use up something that I had already (since I had mentally been saving those for when I made some shredded meat) rather than cooking something new from scratch. 12 minutes in the toaster oven later, they were done.
So in my fridge, I had some salsa from Trader Joe’s, and a pint of sour cream. I used the arepa sort of as a delivery system for everything else. Took the first bite, and – oh my. I wasn’t expecting the arepa to be sweet at all, but it was. It played off the flavors in everything else perfectly. Unfortunately, I only had two arepas. So today will be spent trying to find a sweet delivery system that will hold together well (arepas call for a special kind of masa, and I only have the masa de harina) – sweet cornbread is straight out since it basically fell apart. Any suggestions, anyone? I have so much meat left, I have room to experiment. 