Oscar Selfa, head chef of Amerigos Mexican Bar and Restaurant, at Park Inn Abu Dhabi, Yas Island has provided the perfect bite sized snacks for entertaining. These croquettes get a kick from the spicy jalapenos and as Selfa says, are “great to share with friends around the pool”. This recipe serves six.

Ingredients:

For croquettes:

• 225 g flour
• 500ml milk
• 125 g butter
• 200g cheddar cheese
• salt to taste
• 40g chili jalapenos
• 100g bread crumbs
• 4 eggsoil for frying

For sauce:

• 80g Mayonnaise
  60g BBQ sauce

 

Method:

1. Cook 125 grams flour and butter together in a saucepan, adding milk gradually for ten minutes while stirring on low heat
2. Add cheddar cheese and chopped jalapenos then place in the fridge to cool
3. When mixture is set, roll into 30g balls and dip in remaining flour, then beaten eggs and finally in breadcrumbs
4. Place in fridge until you want to cook
5. Deep fry in preheated oil at 180C until golden brown
6. Mix mayonnaise with BBQ sauce to make dip and enjoy!

 

Check out our very own Tried and Tested review of this recipe below;

Cheddar Cheese Croquettes with Jalapeno

We've always been great fans of anything that involved cheese (to our expanding waistlines disappointment), so imagine how pleased we were when Oscar Selfa, head chef of Amerigos Mexican Bar and Restaurant at Park Inn Abu Dhabi, Yas Island provided us with this recipe for cheddar cheese croquettes with jalapeno.

Not only were we thrilled with the minimum shopping needed for this recipe, since most of the things are basics you'll have in your cupboards, we were able to use the express lane and avoided the dreaded supermarket queues.

At home, we were a bit hesitant to discover the equal portions of flour and butter to make the dough and so did leave off about 25 grams of butter in a very sad attempt at being healthy.

After melting the butter we added the flour to make a very easy dough. On low heat, we then added small amounts of milk and waited until it had been absorbed completely into the dough before adding more. In this way the dough came together in a matter of  minutes.

We then added a large handful of chopped jalapenos, a pinch of salt and slightly more cheddar cheese than called for (only to compensate for our stinginess with the butter). Afterwards we left the pot on the stove to cool to room temperature before we placed it in the refrigerator.

Once the dough was sufficiently cool we rolled up little balls in the flour, egg and seasoned breadcrumbs before frying. The dough was so incredibly soft that our croquettes didn't hold their shape but rather turned into odd shaped mounds when we fried them. Perhaps if you make your croquettes smaller you can avoid this problem or maybe if you add some breadcrumbs to the dough the balls may hold their shape better.

Nevertheless, as appearances are never as important as what's on the inside, we were eager to dig in. The dough was so soft that the croquettes literally melted in your mouth. The sauce was a great addition to the hot and spicy croquettes and helped cool our tongues.

We give it four out of five spoons!