Greetings,

I recently had arepas, made by a Venezuelan friend in San Francisco.
I loved them and would really like to re-create them here at home in
Denver. She used P.A.N. brand cornmeal.

I have looked at five different big-name grocery stores for the P.A.N.
but have been unable to find it anywhere. I now wish that I had
purchased some in San Francisco and brought it back with me. My
friend is not in SF now, so she can't send me any.

After some research online, I have found that the brand P.A.N. could
be substituted with any product labeled as Masa Arepa. I did see
something similar to this at one grocery store, a cornmeal that was
specified as "for tamales".

My question is first, does anyone know of a site from which I can mail
order P.A.N.? I have found just one, but the site requires an order
of $30 or more, and I'm not going to purchase that much P.A.N. or buy
anything else from the site.

My second question is, is anything labeled "Masa Arepa" identical to
the product labeled under the "P.A.N." brand? I really want the
pancakes to be as authentic as possible.

Thank you in advance!

Ginny wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I recently had arepas, made by a Venezuelan friend in San Francisco.
> I loved them and would really like to re-create them here at home in
> Denver. She used P.A.N. brand cornmeal.

Sorry, but I'm not familiar with P.A.N. I do know Masa Harina (sorry, don't
know the brand) is a very finely ground cornmeal which might work. I use it
for tamales but there is no reason you cannot use it for other things too.
Why not ask your friend what she's using now? This is assuming she's not in
Venezuela where (presumably) she cannot ship grain products to the U.S.

Jill