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Potato Croquettes (Pint mashed potato fresh)
1 pint mashed potato (fresh or left over) 1 egg 1 tablespoon water Milk or cream Pinch of salt Add the well-beaten egg to the potato, and sufficient milk or cream to make the potato as soft as can be shaped into balls with the hands. (If fresh mashed potato is used, it may not be necessary to add any milk or cream.) Beat one egg with one tablespoon water and a pinch of salt. Dip a ball of the potato into the egg, then roll it in zwieback crumbs. Place the ball in a croquette mold, close the mold, and tap the closed end on the table in such a way as to force the contents into that end. Smooth the open end. Open the mold and remove the croquette. Place the croquettes on an oiled pan and bake fifteen minutes in a hot oven. Serve with cream sauce or egg sauce made by adding one chopped hard-boiled egg to one pint of cream sauce.
A baked croquette rather than a fried one, which makes it forgiving but also means the crumb coating browns only lightly. A few notes on the vessels and terms.
- Hot ovenRead "hot oven" as roughly 400-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat sets the crust and heats the potato through; lower and the crumbs stay pale and damp.
- QuantitiesA pint of mashed potato is 2 cups, roughly 1 lb of potatoes before cooking. The recipe gives no yield; depending on the size of the mold this is likely to make somewhere around eight to ten croquettes, a side dish for three or four.
- Two eggs, not oneOne well-beaten egg goes into the potato mixture; a second is beaten with the tablespoon of water for the dipping wash. Plan on both.
- Zwieback crumbsZwieback is twice-baked sweetened rusk, still sold as teething biscuit. Dried plain rusk or unseasoned dry breadcrumbs behave the same way; ordinary panko gives a coarser crust than intended.
- The croquette moldA two-part shaper that opened and closed to turn out uniform croquettes; the recipe does not say what shape or material. Without one, roll and press the balls into shape by hand, or pack them into a small measuring spoon and knock them out. Consistency of size matters more than shape, since it governs the baking time.
- Getting the texture rightThe hinge of the recipe is the softness of the potato. Add milk or cream only to the point where a ball just holds its shape in the palm; wetter than that and the croquettes slump and split in the oven. Fresh, still-warm mash usually needs none.
- Oiled panBrush the pan generously and brush the croquettes too. There is no frying fat here, so any browning at all depends on that surface film.
- The saucesCream sauce means a plain white sauce of butter, flour and cream or milk. For the egg sauce, a pint is a large amount for this yield; half a pint of sauce with one chopped hard-boiled egg is closer to a normal serving.