Spanish cuisine # 1 - Croquetas!

A week and a half ago I went to a friend's house in order to make the classic Spanish dish "croquetas". Sold in tapas bars throughout Spain cheap as chips but considered some sort of delicacy here, I have dedicated today's post to its recipe.

When I was growing up, one of my dearest memories was to be woken up by my father very early on the weekend to make mountains of croquetas. One time, he didn't even have to bribe me with a delicious breakfast, it was 6am and it was snowing and everyone knows that little girls (or not so little in my case) love snow, especially when it isn't very common. I was more than happy to get up that particular morning and by the time the rest of the family were up and about, my dad and I had made hundreds of croquetas.

The recipe is easy - it's basically a series of cold bechamel sauce little barrels covered in breadcrumbs, whisked egg, breadcrumbs again and deep fried (in very very hot oil).

Step #1 - making the bechamel sauce. I didn't use butter - but that's quite a personal choice, just make the sauce you're more comfortable with - but olive oil. However, if you use too much olive oil/butter, the croqueta will open when it's being deep-fried.

So, basically, you heat up the oil, and add a couple of tablespoons of flour and mix... and don't stop mixing!

Then it's time to add the pre-heated milk (about 1 litre) - and keep on stirring until the sauce thickens. If it still tastes floury, it just needs to be on the hob longer. It's now when you also add the salt and pieces of meat/fish you wish. In our case, we added amazing pieces of jamón (thick jamón cut into tiny cubes, deeeelicious - thank you Waitrose).

Step #2 - Cooling down the bechamel sauce. It is extremely important to place the sauce in a shallow pan and wait for an hour or so until the sauce is cold and ready to be "magicked" into croquetas.

Step #3 - The fun! My dad would always make the bechamel sauce the night before and it was giving the croquetas their characteristic barrel shape, covering them in bread crumbs and eggs that we did together. So the first step is to get a tea-spoon quantity of bechamel, roll it in the first plate of bread crumbs, cover it and give it its shape.

Then, you put it inside the whisked egg and make sure the egg covers it all around. This is extremely important because it will avoid the bechamel coming out when you are deep frying the croquetas.

After the would-be croqueta has been covered in egg, it is put in another bread crumb plate, cover it with more bread crumbs and presto - it is ready to be deep fried.

Once you have made all of the croquetas (we made around 70 by using a few tablespoons of olive oil, two/3 tablespoons of flour (non raising) and 1 litre of milk), they're ready to be deep fried. Make sure the olive oil is very very hot when you put them in - the hotter the oil, the quicker they'll cook and the less possibilities of the croqueta from opening).

When they're a golden brown colour - which they get very quickly - they're ready to be taken out of the pan. Et voila! Enjoy.