While everyone is learning to bake homemade bread in isolation, I bought a grain mill online to make corn masa from scratch. As a Venezuelan national, I eat arepas regularly. However, I can’t say that my millennial palate has tasted many that weren’t made using the nationally symbolic Harina P.A.N. flour. Like most industrial inventions, this product rendered tradition outdated and the ritual of milling corn at home became a thing of the past—even if this past is a mere generation or two ago. But the advent of Covid-19 has left many of us looking back to tradition, whether that’s pickling and canning, baking or nixtamalizing.
Jose Ripol. Brooklyn, NYC. 05/29/2020