Venezuela.

One industrial product reorganised the entire national kitchen. Until the middle of the twentieth century, making arepas meant soaking dried corn overnight, boiling it, pounding it in a wooden pilón and grinding the result — a job measured in hours and shared between hands. Precooked corn flour compressed that labour into five minutes of stirring, and it is now so ordinary that households measure the week in bags of it. It is not the same thing as Mexican masa harina: Mexican masa is nixtamalised in lime and tastes distinctly of it, while the Venezuelan flour is corn that has been cooked, dried and milled, which gives a milder, cleaner flavour and a softer, more elastic dough. The two are not interchangeable, and swapping them is the most common mistake made by cooks outside the country.

Almost every savoury dish starts with a guiso. Onion, garlic, leek, scallion, red pepper and ají dulce are chopped fine and softened slowly in oil that has been coloured by annatto seeds, then tomato goes in and the mixture cooks down until it no longer tastes raw. Nothing is browned aggressively and nothing is scorched; the goal is a sweet, aromatic, orange-tinted base that will carry shredded beef, fish, chicken or beans. Cilantro is used generously, and culantro — the long-leaved, stronger-smelling cousin — appears wherever cooks can find it.

Dairy is fresh rather than aged. Venezuelan cheeses are made to be eaten within days: queso de mano, a hand-stretched sheet that melts into strands inside a cachapa; queso guayanés, soft and slightly sour; queso telita, sold in stacked discs; and the very salty, very firm queso llanero and queso blanco duro that survive frying and grating. Nata, a thick cultured cream closer to clotted cream than to sour cream, is spread on arepas and spooned onto corn pancakes.

The day has a fixed shape. Breakfast is an arepa, an empanada or perico — eggs scrambled loose with tomato, onion and sweet pepper. Lunch is the substantial meal and is built as a plate rather than a course: rice, something braised in guiso, a contorno of salad or beans, and two or three slices of fried ripe plantain. Dinner is lighter and frequently means arepas again. December suspends all of it in favour of one enormous table — hallacas, pan de jamón, ensalada de gallina and slow-roasted pernil, eaten in the same combination for weeks and never considered repetitive.

Regionally, the country splits along altitude and coastline. The Andean states cook with potatoes, wheat, milk and trout and eat soup for breakfast; the central coast and Caracas produce the braises and the pastry-shop tradition; the llanos are cattle country, where beef is cooked on stakes over open fire and the cheese is aggressively salty; and the Caribbean east lives on fish, coconut and green plantain.