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Vegetable Croquettes
Prepare for this dish a day in advance by cooking extra quantities of vegetables. Boil and mash some potatoes. For 1 pint add I cup- IOI ful each of chopped boiled carrots and beets, green peas, a high seasoning of salt and pepper, 2 tablespoonfuls of grated onion, 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter and 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Mold into small croquettes.
Dip each into slightly beaten egg, roll in fine dry bread crumbs and fry golden brown in deep, smoking hot fat.
A thrift dish built on deliberate leftovers: the mash and the cooked vegetables must be cold and dry before they are shaped, or the croquettes will burst in the fat.
- The proportionsOne pint (2 cups) of mashed potato to 1 cup each of chopped boiled carrots, chopped boiled beets and green peas. That is three cups of vegetable to two of binder, which is generous; if the mixture will not hold a shape, add more potato rather than more egg.
- Dry the potatoBoil the potatoes whole in their skins, drain well, and let the steam escape before mashing. Wet mash is the usual cause of croquettes that collapse in the pan.
- Chill before shapingThe instruction to cook the vegetables a day ahead is doing real work: cold, firm mixture molds cleanly. After shaping, refrigerate the croquettes 30 minutes, then coat and fry.
- Beets bleedChopped beets will stain the whole mixture pink within minutes. Fold them in last and lightly if you want the carrot and pea to stay visible.
- Grated onionTwo tablespoons of raw grated onion is right for flavor but adds moisture. Grate it onto a plate, press off the juice, and use the pulp.
- Smoking hot fatIn modern terms this is usually taken to mean somewhere around 375F. At the smoke point proper the fat is degrading and the crumbs will darken before the center heats through. Fry in batches so the temperature does not drop too far.
- CrumbsFine dry bread crumbs means stale bread dried in a slow oven and sieved, not fresh soft crumbs. Panko works and is crisper; either way, egg-and-crumb twice for a shell that will not split.
Croquettes were the standard nineteenth- and early twentieth-century answer to the question of what to do with cooked food left over, and cookery writers of the period recommended cooking a surplus on purpose so that the second meal was planned rather than salvaged. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the form arrived in English-language household manuals through French professional cookery, where a bound mince was shaped, crumbed and deep-fried. In a low-cost collection the vegetable version earns its place twice over: it stretches a small quantity of butter and a single egg across a full dish, and it turns the ends of a Sunday dinner's carrots, beets and peas into something that looks intentional. The high seasoning called for is not incidental either, since boiled vegetables and potato are bland on their own and the salt, pepper, onion and parsley are all that stand between the cook and a plate of fried starch.