[Sca-cooks] Cuban ham croquettes

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Sep 13, 2006, at 4:02 PM, Christiane wrote:

> Between the afternoon and evening viewings for my uncle on Monday,  
> we went back to my aunt's house where the Cuban contingent of the  
> family had provided a ton of food. Besides very tasty black beans  
> and rice, roast pork, and chicken, there were fried pieces of  
> "black" plaintains, and something I had never had before, the  
> infamous Cuban ham croquettes. Simply, they seemed to be ground ham  
> with a binder of cornmeal, made into little fat cigar shapes and  
> deep-fried. They were really, really good, at least to me, but I am  
> told even better when made with ground roast pork.
>
> Anybody have a recipe? Tooling around online so far has not yielded  
> one. My husband LOVED them and I know he would not mind me adding  
> them to my cooking repetoire.

Did you look under croquetas de jamon? What I've seen/am familiar  
with is a pretty standard European-style croquette (very different  
from the terrifying chicken or turkey croquettes of my childhood...  
my mom was and is an excellent cook in many ways, but had her  
occasional flops, which for some reason seemed to frequently center  
around leftover cooked chicken or turkey). Basically the chopped meat  
in question (in this case, ham) is mixed with a very thick bechamel  
sauce to bind it, usually chilled, formed, chilled again, then coated  
with crumbs before frying.

It's possible that what you got involved cornmeal as a binder, but is  
it also possible this was a bechamel so thick it got sort of grainy  
(either from the flour, the milk curdling, or both?)

Here's what appears to be a fairly standard recipe:

http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=Croquetas%20de%20jamon%20(ham% 
20croquettes)

Incidentally, when a Cuban refers to "roast pork", you want to listen  
very carefully. It's a slightly different product from the typical  
American "throw-it-in-the-oven" roast pork. Although I suppose  
chopping it up and making it into croquettes levels the playing field  
somewhat ;-).

Happy hunting!

Adamantius