Cita’s Kitchen chef brings the flavors of Colombia to Sonoma County

For some it’s a taste of something totally new. For others, it’s the flavor of something familiar, yet far off.

Either way, Cita Vivas loves watching customers take their first few bites of one of her empanadas.

“They bite and they close their eyes. They’re like crying, saying, ‘It’s just like home.’ It makes me smile,” said the owner of Cita’s Kitchen, a pop-up that sells what she says is the only Colombian food in Sonoma County.

The petite mother of two teenage girls and her husband, Moises Salazar, have been winning fans with her homemade empanadas and arepas all summer while serving the food at breweries and wineries and at the Sebastopol farmers’ market on Sundays since April.

Her menu features three kinds of empanadas: beef, chicken and vegetarian stuffed with potatoes, mushrooms, carrots and kale. She serves them with a crunchy, salsa-like condiment called aji, made with onion, garlic, serrano chiles and cilantro that gives a refreshing, subtle heat.

Unlike Argentinian empanadas made with wheat flour and baked, the Colombian version is made with cornmeal then deep-fried.

Vivas, who grew up in Cali, Colombia, moved to California when she was 18. Her mother taught her the technique for making empanadas, but she’s added her own twists.

“I came up with my own system, how to season my own stuffing. It’s all my way,” she said.

Vivas said she always enjoyed cooking. When her daughters were young, she enrolled in culinary classes at Santa Rosa Junior College and later worked in the kitchen at Willi’s Wine Bar, then on Old Redwood Highway. After it burned down, she worked at Stark’s Steakhouse before taking a new job outside the restaurant industry.

But her desire to cook professionally again didn’t fade completely.

“I’ve always had that dream: I just want to have people taste a little bit of Colombia.”

Her first big break was at the craft beer festival Battle of the Brews last year, at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

She made 500 appetizer-size empanadas for the four-hour event. Salazar said they were all gone in 90 minutes and brewery operators asked if she’d do pop-ups at their breweries.

Now Vivas serves food at 10 to 12 events each month. As the creative force, Vivas handles the menu and cooking and even used her artistic talent to create her bright yellow orchid logo. Salazar, a vice president at Poppy Bank in Santa Rosa, handles the business end and anything else that needs to be done.

“I’m the official dishwasher,” he said, laughing.

Taste of Colombia

At her space in a commissary kitchen in east Santa Rosa last week, Vivas was prepping for the final Wednesday night market of the season on Santa Rosa’s Old Couthouse Square.

She already had made five dozen empanadas and began making dough for the arepas, a recent addition to her menu and a staple in Colombian cuisine, similar to tortillas in Mexico.

“They are very traditional in Colombia. We eat it every morning, afternoon or night. You can eat at any time of the day,” Vivas said.

Arepas are much thicker than tortillas, or even gorditas, and are made with a different type of cornflour than tortillas, which are made with masa harina.

Arepas, on the other hand, are made with masarepa, a precooked cornflour. Masarepa, Vivas said, can easily be found in Latino markets and some larger grocery stores.

She added the cornflour to a stand mixer, followed by softened butter and cold water, bit by bit to create a smooth, supple dough. Its aroma permeated the kitchen with a faint earthy sweetness.

The last addition was mozzarella cheese — Colombians eat a lot of cheese, she said.

She deposited the dough on the counter and let it rest, briefly, before taking part of it and rolling it out about half an inch thick.

At home, she said, she forms them into discs by hand. But for her business, she simply uses a red shatterproof bowl to cut them into uniform 5-inch circles.

As she worked, Vivas told how her family would go to the river and her mother would gather wood and rocks to make a fire pit where she’d cook arepas over an open flame.

“I grew up smelling that, and it smells like home,” Vivas said. “It’s a precious memory I have.”

She still prefers to cook arepas over a charcoal fire when she can, but she cooks them on a gas grill at her pop-ups. They also can be cooked on a skillet, although Vivas is partial to arepas with grill marks on them.

Arepas can be topped simply with a smear of butter and a generous layer of grated cotija cheese, along with sliced avocado. That's how Vivas’ daughter Kamila likes them.

Another staple of daily life in Colombia, Vivas said, is soup.

“In Colombia, we eat soup every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s hot. We have soup for lunch, dinner, too,” she said.

When Vivas takes a rare day off, she’ll often make her favorite soup — sancocho — a chicken soup with potatoes, plantains, yucca, corn and “lots of cilantro.” She serves it with a side of rice and sliced avocado.

Salazar, who grew up in Nicaragua, was quick to mention another quirky accompaniment to soup that’s common in Colombia.

“They eat a banana with soup,” he said. “I’ve never seen it before. Not a plantain — an actual banana.”

Sweet treats of home

Before launching Cita’s Kitchen, Vivas was making pastries and beautifully decorated cakes by request, which she still does.

At a recent private catered birthday lunch, she made milhojas, a dessert of a thick caramel sauce made with milk and sugar similar to dulce de leche.

“We eat it (in Colombia), like, you grab a spoonful and start licking it,” she said, rolling her eyes as if remembering the flavor.

Vivas sandwiches the sauce, plus fried apples and pears, between two layers of puff pastry. It’s a simple, yet impressive make-ahead dessert.

Other family dessert favorites are buñuelos and arroz con leche, or rice pudding, something both Vivas and Salazar grew up on.

“That’s one of the best childhood memories I have from my grandma,” Salazar said. “I hear the word arroz con leche — it reminds me of my grandma.”

When pressed to choose his favorite, his wife’s or his grandmother’s, he was uncomfortably noncommittal.

“It’s OK, you can say your grandma,” Vivas said, laughing.

Even if he did choose his grandmother’s, Salazar is clearly his wife’s biggest fan and cheerleader, noting that not only are Colombian expats seeking them out, but so are people from all over South America and the Caribbean.

“People are embracing my food and my culture. My food is my culture,” Vivas said. “Every time I hear a (good) comment, it fills me with life. It makes me keep going.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jennifer Graue at 707-521-5262 or jennifer.graue@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @JenInOz.