Venezuelan cacao back on TV as Willie "Raises the Bar"

Venezuelan chocolate sales in the UK are expected to get a boost after funky new logos were unveiled recently for William "Willie" Harcourt-Cooze's 100 per cent cacao products. The launch coincides with a new three-part Channel 4 series called "Raising the Bar: Willie's Chocolate Revolution" and his brand new chocolate bars, which will be sold initially in Selfridges from 1 April.It's all about

Arepa & Co - Authentic Arepera in Camden Market

Arepa & Co is one of the few authentic Venezuelan areperas in the UK and a gastronomic experience that global food junkies just cannot miss.

Tucked away in Camden Lock Market, the hippest market in the capital, Venezuelan entrepreneur Gus's small food stall has been turning on Londoners to the true tastes of his native Caracas for four years with the catchy slogan: "Venezuelan Food with a Pinch

La Reina Pepiada - The Curvy Queen of Arepas

The "Reina Pepiada" is one of the most popular arepa dishes in Venezuela: a lip-smacking combination of shredded chicken, mayonnaise and petit pois stuffed into a grilled cornmeal arepa with slices of soft avocado.

Like the doner kebab in Britain, the Reina Pepiada - or Reina Pepeada in some places - is a firm favourite with drinkers and ravers who flock to late night areperas after the bars

Arepa de Maiz Pelao: Making arepas the hard way

Edelmira Jimenez from Cojedes State makes her arepas the old-fashioned way by pounding shucked maize kernels in a large wooden mortar called a pilon.

The pilon is believed to have been brought to Venezuela from Africa with the slaves who worked the sugar, cacao and coffee plantations. Before that, the indigenous tribes of Venezuela used stone metates for grinding their maize, similar to the

Recipe: Carne Mechada - Venezuelan Shredded Beef

Shredded beef is a key dish in Latin American cooking, from Cuba's rather unappetizingly named but utterly delicious "ropa vieja" ("old clothes") to Venezuela's national dish Pabellon Criollo, where the beef is typically accompanied by white rice, black beans and slices of fried plantain.

It is also used as a filling for empanadas and arepas.

The name shredded or pulled beef comes from the

Recipe: Perico - Venezuelan Scrambled Eggs

You don't get plain old scrambled eggs in Venezuela. As befits a vibrant tropical country where eating great-tasting food is an intrinsic part of the culture, you get something far more exciting and colourful: Perico.The name of the dish comes from the Spanish word for parrot, probably because the red, yellow and green of the ingredients echoes the parrot's colourful plumage. Interestingly,

Recipe: How to Make Arepas

Arepas are cornmeal patties that are eaten in place of bread in Venezuela. They are quick to make, healthy and can be eaten at any time of the day. At breakfast, they can be served steaming hot from the oven with a slather of butter, or filled with cheese, ham or perico, Venezuelan-style scrambled eggs. During the day, they make the perfect snack and are sold in fast-food outlets called areperas

Recipe: Caraotas Negras - Venezuelan Black Beans

Tasty, cheap and nutritious, black beans are as emblematic of Venezuela as the colours of the flag - and they're good for you.

And while other Latin American countries might refer to their beans as frijoles, porotos, judias or habichuelas, in Venezuela they are always caraotas.

In England they are often sold as Turtle Beans, a name which comes from the Caribbean and is said to be inspired by

Lunch with Los Amigos Invisibles

Max and Jason of Current TV join Venezuelan band Los Amigos Invisibles for a brunch of arepas and cachapas at Beverly Hills' famous gourmet java-joint Coupa Cafe.

The restaurant is run by Jean Paul Coupal, the French-Canadian owner of Cafe Arabica in Caracas.

The menu combines single-estate coffees from the finest fincas in Venezuela with hefty helpings of popular dishes such as Pabellon

Eating out - Arepera Glossary

Arepas are Venezuela's homegrown alternative to bread or rolls, cornmeal "cakes" about the size of a hockey puck that are crunchy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside.Infinitely versatile, they can be eaten solo with butter or opened up and stuffed with a variety of fillings to make a delicious snack.While most Venezuelans will eat arepas at home, if you want something more exotic -

Cornmeal Cravings and the Hunt for Harina Pan

Sometimes you can travel the world looking for something only to get back and find it was just round the corner all along. That's what happened to me when I went looking for Harina Pan, the basic ingredient for Venezuelan arepas. You can say what you like about arepas; I've heard them described as "bland stodge in a bun", which is unfair, and "about the size of an ice-hockey puck and just as easy