Croquettes

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Yesterday I had many leftover pork cutlets, which I'd made with juniper sauce. Usually I make croquettes with the meat from the chicken stock. But I wondered, "If instead I used these pork cutlets, already flavored by the wine and orange and juniper berries ..."

The other advantage of the pork is: to remove the bones from the cutlets is much easier than removing them from the chicken.

Anastasia Grimaldi, author of the excellent foodblog, "Any secret..." (http://anastasiagrimaldi.blogspot.com/), gave me two ideas: (1) make the croquettes in the shape of little cylinders, instead of balls; and (2) roll the croquettes not in breadcrumbs but in corn flour, to make a nice crust. Unfortunately -- and perhaps you can see this in the photos -- I had only a combination of fine and coarse. The crust was a little gritty at times! Be sure to use only the fine flour.

Ingredients

Leftover meat
Eggs (c. 1 egg per 1/2 lb. of meat)
Salt
Freshly-ground black pepper
Milk
Freshly-ground nutmeg
Garlic (optional)
Parsley (optional)
Homemade breadcrumbs (or sliced of stale bread*)
Grated cheese (or pieces of grating cheese*)
Fine corn flour
Lemons
Extra-virgin olive oil, or homemade lard

* = Everything will go into the food processor; therefore, you can put whole pieces.

Preparation

In the food processor, put all the ingredients except the last three. Put a few drops of water in your hand,  form the little cylinders, roll them in the corn flour, fry them in oil or lard, and when they are browned, buon appetito!

As a snack, or as a light second course, they are truly delicious!

Serve them with fresh-squeezed lemon juice. Or, if you have leftover juniper/orange/wine sauce, you can use that. A third possible condiment is a yogurt/garlic/lemon sauce, Mediterranean-style. (But then again, lemon juice alone is the most Mediterranean condiment that there is.)

Califoirnian Lemons
(photo: MenloGrowers.com)