Southwest 5 to 7, backing
south 4 or 5 later.
Moderate or rough.
Showers, fog patches.
Moderate or poor, becoming
good.
A good day to do some serious
cooking.
Did you know that, even if
you make your own chips and cook everything from scratch, you are quite likely
to buy your potato croquettes frozen?
Which is odd since they are a
way to use leftover mash. I bought them always frozen and had two feeble attempts to
make them my own, but they failed. So this is attempt three.
Plus I wanted to get rid of
my potatoes, since I did plan to go from tomorrow for a bit into lighter
cooking. You know, don’t let the pounds creep up, fight them occasionally and
tell them who the Boss is. Otherwise you have to go on a diet and this is a
bleak prospect. Well, I still have some (by now cooked) potatoes so I post phone
that for a day and complete tomorrow a challenge (more tomorrow).
The red cabbage I made yesterday
and will reheat today (maybe I post the recipe one day) and, since I don’t want
to eat meat, opted for the Granovita “mock duck”.
Which is astonishingly good. But
feel free to grill duck breast, or, maybe even better, a venison steak.
Potato croquettes
3 handful of cooked and
drained, cold potatoes for mashing.
1 duck egg, separated into
white and yolk.
1 tablespoon of potato flour
(I use this from Ocado)
about 10-15gr of melted, but
now cold unsalted butter
1 good handful of breadcrumbs
Salt, white pepper and a good
pinch of grated nutmeg
About half a litre of
groundnut oil.
Mix the egg yolk, the salt,
pepper, nutmeg and the potato flour until smooth. Add the butter and stir. In a
separate bowl mash the hell out of the potatoes, they should be really smooth,
add the egg mixture after a while to help you get on. Give it now again a good
stir with a wooden spoon (and be good to yourself and put the now redundant
potato ricer into cold water or the mixture sticks to it like cement).
Set
aside and beat the egg white. I used the little battery operated milk frother
for this, you know it, it might lurk in your drawer
too. The egg white should be white as milk and have the consistency of cream by
the time you have finished. Pour into a shallow plate and put the breadcrumbs
into another. It’s always good to have more to top it up if necessary.
Form a little roll from the
potato mixture, about as thick as a Cumberland sausage and as long as your
little finger. Push the ends in so that thing looks like a cylinder. It should
not stick very much at this stage.
Try to roll it into the egg
white, it really sticks in there and then roll it into the breadcrumbs. Lay on
a plate, repeat the process. I ended up with 4, but they were pretty “fat”
When you are finished, take
the plate and pop it into the freezer to aid the egg white sticking to it.
Wash up.
Once you are ready to eat (could
be a few hours later, the croquettes don’t mind in the freezer), reheat the
cabbage and heat (or get your real meat ready for pan frying) the mock duck.
Adjust taste, if you find it too “Asian” for this kind of meal, add a bit of
redcurrant jelly or Cumberland sauce.
Either use a deep fryer or a
chip pan. Fill with groundnut oil, about a third. Put heat on high, and when it
is hot add croquettes and lower the heat immediately. Cook for 5-7 minutes. They
are ready when brown all over and start to float towards the top.
Verdict:
Oh Dear, how can things go so
wrong and right at the same time. Where to start?
Okay, it was a hell of
washing up. Don’t mind the work involved in the preparation of a dish, but I do
hate washing up. And there was a lot of it. Far too much. You might shrug your
shoulders if you have a dishwasher.
Next: It was too much. Would
have been happy with 2, possible 3. But my appetite is not yours.
And now to the pathetic bid:
They were perfect. Taste was excellent, and the coating stayed on. They fried
fine and in less time than the shop bought variety.
Yet.. something was missing.
Maybe it was the lack of taste of reconstituted potato flakes, monosodium
glutamate or artificial preservatives. They were “just” perfect deep fried mash
rolls with a crunchy and satisfying coating.
But they were not the potato
croquettes I was after.
And then it dawned to me.
When I started cooking chips
from scratch in the late seventies, early eighties, it was like coming home. I
still see my gran (who taught me cooking) with her potato press. In her
household there was no such a thing as shop bought chips. And while the
seventies were high on convenience food, so called modern food for the woman who
is at the cutting edge, chips had for me a particular taste I was longing for
and no amount of ready food could satisfy that.
But I never remember my gran
doing potato croquettes. They were always frozen. Maybe I am after the taste of
early sixties convenience food?
Pretty frustrating
experience.
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