Croquetas

Alberto Chicote—Chicote to one and all, except perhaps his mum—is a Spanish chef and TV celebrity. He came to fame with a Spanish version of the Gordon Ramsay show Kitchen Nightmares, or Pesadilla en la cocina. That's the programme where Gordon/Alberto is invited to a restaurant, orders some food and, based on what he eats, how he is served, what he sees in the kitchen, and what he gleans from talking to owners and workers, sets about a plan to make the restaurant more successful. In both Spanish and British versions, it seems absolutely essential that there is a lot of swearing.

Chicote has often said that croquettes—croquetas in Spanish—are the ultimate litmus test for a restaurant. He always asks for croquetas if they are on the menu. His idea is that a good croqueta is a sign that the cook knows something of kitchen technique and uses quality ingredients. He's looking for handmade croquetas, not the horrible mass-produced and frozen ones that we are so often served. He is quite forthright in his views on industrial croquetas and calls them a crime against humanity.

A good croqueta needs a silky and creamy béchamel inside. If the sauce is too thick or floury—like wallpaper paste—it shows the cook doesn't know how to cook out the raw flour taste. The breadcrumb outside should be thin and crunchy, not oily, not soggy, but not Kevlar-jacket-like either. The croqueta should taste nice, and you should be able to tell what it tastes of. Often you can't decide whether you have the ham, chicken, cod, or boletus croqueta because the ingredients are overwhelmed by the béchamel sauce. The bar or restaurant is cutting quality and being stingy with quantity.

It was the French who invented the croquette. It turns up in 17th-century cookbooks. The name comes from the French verb croquer—to crunch. But some chap called Antonin Carême is credited with inventing the modern croquette. His croquettes were small, bite-sized, and relied on a "mother sauce" to carry different taste ingredients.

The French invaded (or were invited into) the Iberian Peninsula at the start of the 19th century. Lots of ordinary Spaniards didn't particularly care for the French and started a guerrilla campaign against the occupying forces. Amazingly, as push came to shove, the Spanish army whupped the French against the odds in open battle at Bailén, and as the war progressed, that's where Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) made his name by driving the French Grand Armée all the way back to Waterloo. The Spanish did like the croquettes/croquetas though, and, in an obvious sign of patriotism, appropriated them. Croquetas might have been invented by the French, but nowadays they are as iconically Spanish as tortilla de patatas or paella.

By the end of the 19th century, the croqueta had moved from the tables of the wealthy to the homes of us poor plebeians. The Spanish Civil War helped the humble croqueta to become a food of national significance. During the war, and the long period of austerity that followed in Francoist Spain, the lack of everything meant that people went hungry and food was drab and drear. Croquetas though were tasty and could be made from leftovers. The broth from cocido (another inexpensive meal made from next to nothing), a scrap of ham, or salt cod flakes could be mixed with béchamel to make a filling. Béchamel is a roux of equal parts butter and flour cooked together then thinned with milk for creaminess. The crunchy exterior of the croqueta used breadcrumbs from stale bread. Milk and butter came from backyard goats, eggs from hens—some of which lived in the unlikeliest of places. The popularity of croquetas was a bit like the popularity of pancakes in the UK during the 50s and 60s. Simple, available ingredients produced something tasty and filling.

Into the 21st century, the humble croqueta was rediscovered by famous chefs like Marisa Sánchez (from the Echaurren restaurant in La Rioja), who made the béchamel almost liquid and the exterior crisp and paper-thin. Nowadays, of course, the gastrobar cooks flavour croquetas with everything imaginable, from squid ink and kimchi to pumpkin and gorgonzola.

Croquetas are a personal favourite, but as both Alberto and I well know, they can range from the worst tasteless, wallpaper-paste and soggy-crumb article to something sublime.