Recipe: Croquetas!

Croquetas are probably my favorite Spanish food.  They are a staple of tapas bars, but they are really best when made at home.  My mother loves them too.  In fact when Javier and I announced our plans to marry, she asked what she was getting in return for losing her daughter.  Javier offered croquetas, and she jumped at the opportunity.  So, I was basically traded for about a dozen croquetas.  I don't know if that means they are very valuable, or that I'm not worth much, but they are definitely delicious.

Croquetas are breaded and fried roll of bechamel with assorted fillings.  You can basically put any fillings in the croquetas.  People often use leftovers.  They can be filled with vegetables, meat, fish, or seafood.  We always put the same ingredients in our croquetas.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 1/2 green bell pepper
• 1/2 onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 cup (250ml) steamed spinach
• 1 chicken breast
• 3oz (85g) ham
• 4 cup (1 L) Moderately consistency bechamel*
• flour (for coating croquetas)
• 2-3 eggs
• bread crumbs

*We will post a video later of good technique for making a creamy and smooth bechamel.

Mince the red pepper, green pepper, onion, and garlic.  Saute in a pan on medium heat with a little olive oil until the onions are translucent and the peppers are soft.  Put aside in a large bowl.

Steam the spinach until it is completely wilted.  Take from steamer and put into a strainer.  You need to get as much water out of the spinach as possible, otherwise the water will make the croquettas soggy.  I usually squeeze it in a fine mesh strainer until it is relatively dry.  Remove the squeezed spinach from the strainer and mince it on the cutting board.  Put this with the cooked vegetables you placed in the large bowl earlier.

Chop the chicken breast and cook in a pan on medium heat.  Use only a little oil; you do not want the chicken to get to oily.  Salt the chicken thoroughly, because we won't be adding much salt to the croquetas otherwise.  Put the cooked chicken in the large bowl with the vegetables and spinach.

Finally, chop the ham and add it to the bowl.  Mix all of the ingredients and then add the bechamel.  Mix to ensure that all ingredients are thoroughly coated with the bechamel.  Make sure there are no clumps of fillings.  You can add a little more salt at this point.

Now comes the most complicated part of making croquetas.  Usually when we make croquetas, we make a lot of filling so that we can freeze the rolls and we don't have to make them too often.  It is a very labor intensive food, so make sure you have the time to do it.

What makes these little morsels so hard to produce is that you are taking a semi liquid - the bechamel - and trying to roll it into a ball.  If you are doing this for the first time, you might want to make a thicker bechamel.  We actually make a fairly runny bechamel, because it makes the finished product so much better.  Since our bechamel is of moderate consistency, we usually put the bowl with all the fillings and bechamel into the freezer for a while.  We try to get the mix cold enough that it is more solid, but not so cold that it crystallizes and is frozen.  Even if you are using a thick bechamel, you should leave the mix in the fridge for a couple hours to make it easier to work with.

Now that our bechamel and filling mix is cold and more solid, we are ready to make the croquetas.  Prepare three small bowls: one with flour, one with whisked egg, and one with breadcrumbs.  I usually add a little water to the egg to make it last longer and coat the croquetas more evenly. 

Take a large spoonful of bechamel mix and drop it in the flour.  Using your hands, gently roll it around until it is completely coated.  Carefully transfer to egg bowl and gently maneuver until it is coated.

Transfer the roll to the final bowl and coat in bread crumbs.  Once the mass is coated, you can form it into a nicer shape.  It will be very delicate, so you need to be gentle.

Move the roll to a baking sheet, and repeat the process until all of your filling is gone.  As you finish one croqueta and move on to the next, you might want to rinse your hands.  Removing the clinging remnants of the previous croqueta helps to form the next.  Slightly wet hands also help to prevent the bechamel mix from sticking to your fingers.

This process seems straightforward in writing, but when you start doing it you will realize what a pain it really is.  I have done this many times, and I still get frustrated.  Again, if you are going to do this for the first time, you might just want to use a thicker bechamel.  It will make your life much easier.

Once your baking sheet is full, put it in the freezer for a day or so.  This will ensure they are completely frozen and easier to handle.  Once frozen, you can take them off the baking sheet and put into a Tupperware.  Store them in the freezer and just pull out how many you need when you are ready to eat.

When you are ready to cook the croquetas, take out only how many you need.  When we fry them, they need to still be frozen, otherwise they will fall apart.  We deep fry them in olive oil.  You do not need a lot of olive oil to do it, you just need a tall skinny pot to do it in.  Using olive oil will make them so much better. 

If you can not fry them completely submerged, it is possible to roll them around in a pan with a shallow layer of oil.  You will still need a fair amount of oil: maybe 1" (2.5cm) deep.  We used to cook them in a pan, but it is very hard to keep them round.  They often end up triangular.  If you need to do it this way, use two spatulas and carefully roll them.  Make sure that the side you are cooking is crisp and brown before rolling onto the next side.

Submerge the croqueta until it is golden brown and crisp.  Let the oil drain off and place in a pie pan in a warm oven.  Putting them in the oven keeps them hot while you cook the rest of them.  Do not put in an oven that is too hot, because the croqueta will "pop" open and the fillings will drain out.

 Once all of the croquetas are cooked, place them on a plate and enjoy with a nice green salad!

Aracena and La Gruta de las Maravillas

We escaped hitchhiking hell and arrived in Huelva.   A little ways from Huelva there are some pretty nice beaches, so we stayed a few days there.  We stayed with this awesome guy and his roommates in their apartment.  The guy was pretty fun to talk to, though we really didn't do much with him since he had recently hurt his ribs and was incapacitated.  We decided we would go to the beach, so he offered us his bicycle and his roller blades.  The roller blades were WAY too big, but I put them on and we worked our way through this nature preserve to the beach.  My feet were killing me by the time we got there.  The ride was really lovely though.  The path was covered by stunted pine trees which provided our only relief from the scorching mid-summer sun.  When we arrived at the beach, we walked along and played in the water a little.  There was also a festival going on in one of the little towns, so we walked around and ate some super fresh seafood.  Clams and shrimp are a perfect way to refresh before rushing to catch a bus back to town.

After a couple days we left Huelva and went north to the mountains around Aracena.  We did our best to hitchhike and catch buses around these mountains, but we again struggled to get a ride.  One night, we had to ask a family who owned a hotel to let us stay there even though it was closed.  Nobody would pick us up, and it was our only option.

We did get two rides while in this area.  One ride was by this elderly man who only spoke about how dangerous it was for him to be picking us up.  Javier kept reassuring him that everything was ok and that we would do nothing to him, but he was still concerned.  The other ride was from another man, who was much more generous.  He actually went out of his way to take us to a couple of places he was not going to.  He gave us a little tour of the area.  Very cool.  Otherwise, hitchhiking kinda sucks in southern Spain.

We finally arrived to Aracena to see La Gruta de las Maravillas - the cave of wonders.  Aracena is a nice town.  There is a large hill in the center which has a ruined castle on top, and beneath the mountain (literally beneath) is a very magnificent cave.  We walked around the town, and then decided to take a tour of the cave.  It was not a long tour, but some of the formations are very impressive.

Emerging from the darkness of the cave, we took a hike up to the top of the hill to check out the castle ruins.  The view of the city was beautiful on such a perfect clear day.

The Algarve

 We explored Lisbon and the area around the city to exhaustion, and decided we needed to move on.  At that point, we could either go north or south.  We decided to head south to the Algarve.  First we took a bus inland to Beja.  We stayed with a university professor there.  We had a wonderful time having dinner in her beautiful house, but unfortunately she could only host us for one night.  She let us know about the buses out of town as she dropped us off the next morning in the town center.  We explored the city a bit, and decided that instead of taking a bus, we would try to hitchhike to our next host's house.  The city was nice.  We visited the castle, and although it was a simple fortress, we had fun exploring it.

In the afternoon we started to hitchhike, but it soon became clear that hitchhiking was not very good in Portugal.  Most people who drove by would scream out the window at us and flip us off.  All we were doing is asking for a ride, but the people were taking very serious offense.  After some time failing to get picked up, we decided to change location.  We thought our luck might change, but it didn't.  People continued to be extremely rude to us.  I have never experienced such horrible treatment while hitchhiking.  Later on, we spoke to other veteran hitchhikers who had the same experience in Portugal as well as Spain.  I wouldn't suggest trying to get around these countries this way.

Eventually, a car actually stopped.  To our embarrassment, it was our host.  She had told us hitchhiking wouldn't' work, and there she was willing to help even though it was going to inconvenience her.  She actually drove us an hour and a half to our other host's house, because it was easier for her to do so than to give us a ride to the bus station in the morning.  What a wonderful woman.

 We did finally arrive to our next hosts house.  An old cantankerous German man accompanied by three Russians.  It was all a little wierd.  The German was not very nice - actually he was a dick.  He was in a wheelchair, and I guess had taken a very pessimistic and angry view of the world.  Despite also being disabled, he took every chance to make fun of Javier's disability.  I wasn't sad when we left his house to head to Lagos.

 
We took a bus to the southern coast, where we could begin to enjoy the beaches.  In Lagos, we spent our first night in a cramped hostel room with two Australian idiots.  They came in drunk in the middle of the night, talking about girls and idiotic things.  For example: "Why didn't she like me.  Maybe I should have worn my other shirt.  It is luckier."  "Yeah, you do look good in that shirt."  I wanted to get out of my bed and give them a piece of my mind, but I bit my tongue and did my best to fall back asleep.

 

The next day we went searching for a cheaper and quieter place to stay.  We found an actual apartment, rented by this woman.  It was cheaper than our cramped hostel room, and we had privacy.  Awesome.  We explored the city.  The area around the beach is really cool.  There are all these rock outcroppings out in the water, and the beaches are isolated by cliffs.  It is no wonder that this is such a popular tourist destination.  

While in the south, we also visited Sagres, an old military outpost located in a perfect strategic spot on a thin peninsula.  It is VERY windy on this peninsula, and from what we heard, it is always windy there.  When we left Lagos, we continued back towards Spain along the coast.  Our last stop was Tavira.  We tried once more to hitchhike - I guess we are a little stubborn - and had the same awful experience.  We ended up spending the night huddled in an abandoned lot trying to sleep while the mosquitoes ate us up.  The next day, we gave up and just took a bus to Huelva. 

Sintra: Fairytale Castles

 Just a short train ride from Lisbon is a small town called Sintra.  In Sintra is a castle straight out of a fairytale.  This castle, pearched upon the top of a mountain, is colorfully painted, with intricate carvings, and lavish furniture.  It is really not very large, but very beautiful.  Just down the road, perched on top of the adjacent mountain, is a fortress.  The fortress is not as impressive as the castle, but the views are amazing.

 

We cruised around these hills, hiking and taking buses up and down the road all day.  Back near the train station, we found a Chinese resturaunt that we loved.  It was actually pretty good food for extremely cheap!  We actually ate there twice that day.  If you ever go there and need to eat, I absolutely recommend it. 

Lisbon

We arrived in Lisbon during their annual city festival: the feast of Saint Anthony.  Because the festival is so popular for tourists, the city was packed and we were unable to find any Couch host.  We struggled to even find a reasonably priced hostel that wasn't full.  We spent our days walking around the city.  So many people were visiting and partying in the streets that our experience in Lisbon was unique.  Each day, we would check out of our hostel hoping that someone would accept our Couchsurfing request, but we were unsuccessful for a few nights.  Finally, a nice man accepted our request, but told us that he was not going to be at his house very much.  We were still happy to accept his offer, so each additional night we spent in Lisbon, we waited late into the evening for him to pick us up. 

The city of Lisbon is not the most beautiful.  I really enjoyed the winding streets that line the hills of the town, but the town has a very dirty feel to it.  When you are walking in the center of town, you are constantly berated by people selling drugs.  We were told that most of these people are offering fake drugs (in hopes of taking you somewhere), which is how there are so many running around without getting caught. 

An important thing to know about Portugal in general, is when you go out to eat in a restaurant, do not eat any bread or other appetizer they put on the table unless you want to pay an exorbitant amount for it.  In many places - like the U.S. - if bread, butter, or anything else is put on the table before ordering, it is complimentary.  In Portugal, they will put out many little plates of appetizers, and if you eat any of them you will pay many Euros.  We even experienced times where more than half a dozen little plates were put out in front of us.  We personally believe that this is a strategy to squeeze money out of hungry resturaunt patrons, waiting for their actual meal.  This is particularly sleazy when considering that many tourists may not know about this little trick.

Lisbon offered us the ability to take buses to many places, but once we got to those places, it was hard to move on.  There is plenty to see in the vicinity of Lisbon, but if you want to do a little bus-tour loop, you will find it difficult.  Many of the small towns don't have connecting buses to other towns, so you will often have to go all the way back to Lisbon to continue.  When we did a loop around this area, we ended up hitchhiking back to a train station before nightfall.  The reality of this is that we were very lucky.  Hitchhiking in Portugal is really awful, but we will get to that later.

Cacares, Merida, & Badajoz

In central western Spain there are three cities that are very interesting to visit: Cacares, Merida, and Badajoz.  Cacares has an awesome citadel.  It seems plain, lacking any color or embellishment in its stone walls, but it has a very medieval feel.  While in Cacares, you can visit the Aljibe, a very old Hispanic-Arabic cistern.  It is very beautiful to walk down into the cistern and see the light reflecting off the water.  Otherwise, you can walk around and see Cacares' many towers (the citadel has 30) and churches. 

Next on our way to Portugal was Merida.  Merida is known for its Roman ruins.  The ruins in Merida are spread throughout the town, and you can spend a lot of time visiting all of the sites.  There is a very interesting aqueduct. It is not as impressive as the one in Segovia, but it is very different and maybe even more asthetically pleasing.  There is also a very beautifully intact Roman theater (except for one theater I saw in Greece in 2012, this is one of the best preserved).  The ruins continue all over the city.

Finally, our last stop before leaving Spain is Badajoz.  This city is right on the border.  In Badajoz we stayed with this young hippie who lived with his father and grandfather.  These three men were histerical.  They would all have this huge lunch and pass out on the couches in the living room.  They were really lovely men and were very wonderful hosts.  Badajoz is a nice city, but not as interesting as Cacares or Merida.  Nonetheless, it is a nice city to walk around.