As I was biking through downtown Minneapolis on my way home from work yesterday, I noticed the new exterior at Solera, a tapas restaurant that I have enjoyed many times. I didn’t enjoy the new look. I find the Spanish flag awnings are a bit garish — not to mention nationalistic — compared with the formerly quiet, Gaudí inspired blue and tile. Far more offensive, however, are the new banners hanging vertically down the side of the building that proudly proclaim Solera to be the “Cucina de España”. If you’re not shaking your head incredulously right now, I should explain that “cucina” is the Italian word for kitchen; the word in Spanish is “cocina”. In addition to “kitchen”, cocina refers to cuisine, home cooking and cookery — all things to which Solera would presumably like to refer.

When I first saw this I was sure it was just a printer error. Maybe nobody at the sign company spoke Spanish and maybe the sign was hung in a hurry without checking with anyone at the restaurant. An expensive error, to be sure, but one that would be corrected quickly. I even pulled off the road to try to take a photo of the banners, so sure was I that they would be taken down and replaced with corrected versions before anyone noticed (my iPhone camera, unfortunately, failed to work — but that’s another post).

But then I checked Solera’s website. Here’ a screenshot from the top of the page:

And the page footer:

Apparently, Solera is embracing the “cucina” thing wholeheartedly.

At this point I started to question my own knowledge of Spanish. Maybe this was just a word I wasn’t familiar with — I checked dictionaries and the incomparable wordreference.com, but I couldn’t find anything. Maybe it was Catalan? No — that would be “cuina”. I even called a Spanish professor, but she just confirmed that cucina was not a Spanish word.

Was Solera going for some kind of Italian-Spanish fusion concept, and expressing this through the fusion of the languages in their tagline? Not according to the first sentence on their homepage:

Featuring an evocative menu, authentically embracing the cuisine of Spain, Solera offers an unparalleled experience for social dining in a vibrant, Spanish-influenced atmosphere.

Embracing the cuisine of Spain, sure, but not the language. The menu is pure Spain.

This is even more confusing since the new chef at Solera, Jorge Guzman, is a native of Mexico City, and I doubt he’s the only member of the kitchen staff who speaks Spanish. If the marketing people had bothered to check with Guzman one would think this error might have been avoided.

The idea of marketing raises the possibility that this is all just a cynical ploy for attention, for nitpicking blog coverage like you’re currently reading. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and seeing these banners certainly made me stop, and here I am writing this post, playing into their manipulative hands. Mission accomplished. But does this lead me to take Solera seriously as a place to celebrate and enjoy the culture of Spain? Pues, no.

I’m not sure why I’ve become so obsessed, but I’ve been thinking about it since last night and I just can’t make sense of it. If it’s an error, it’s a huge and repeated error that speaks badly of the organization, especially after its recent management change. If it’s intentional, I have yet to come up with a plausible theory for what they were going for. Am I just linguistically ignorant? Can you help me out here?

One of the greatest pleasures the table offers is a leisurely couple of hours spent snacking over wine: embracing the Spanish concept picar — just a nibble here and there. For something so delicious and satisfying, a dinner of tapas is also easy to prepare: we already had a chorizo in the fridge from Olympic Provisions in Portland, OR and a quick trip to Surdyk’s yielded a wedge of Chabrin cheese (French, true, but near the border), some Basque-style olives and a bottle of fruity and spicy Spanish wine (2007 Peñascal Tempranillo-Shiraz).

I happened to have a loaf of bread baking in the oven, but it would have been just as well to buy bread. Cured meat, cheese, olives, bread and wine; something about these foods seems very elemental to civilization. It would have been enough to stop at the essentials, but since it was Saturday and Saturday compels me toward more ambitious cooking projects, I also made patatas bravas, my favorite Spanish bar food.

Two hours passed picando with one, two, three glasses of wine is a fine way to spend the evening.

Patatas Bravas

Take whatever quantity of potatoes suits you and cut them into irregular chunks. Peel the potatoes if desired. A recipe I read suggested starting them slow in oil and gradually increasing the heat until they are deeply golden. My own technique was to par-cook the potatoes in boiling water until a fork could just be inserted, then drain and dry them. I then fried them in 350°F oil until they were golden — unfortunately our stove’s rather pathetic BTU output meant this took too long and the potatoes got a bit tough. Probably the best technique is to follow french-fry procedure: blanch the potatoes in 325ºF oil until blond and then finish them at 375ºF. The goal is to have crispy potatoes with creamy interiors. Salt the potatoes after removing them from the oil.

Serve hot with salsa brava and alioli.

Salsa Brava

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 ½ cups tomato puree, fresh or canned
• 1 t paprika (pimentón dulce)
• ½ t cayenne
• 1 t salt

Heat the garlic and olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat until the garlic turns golden. Add the tomatoes and fry until the color darkens slightly. Stir in the paprika, cayenne and salt and simmer a few more minutes. Taste for seasoning: the sauce should be slightly spicy and taste clearly of paprika.

Alioli

• 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
• ¼ t ground mustard
• 1 t salt
• ¼ t black pepper
• 2 t lemon juice
• 1 egg yolk
• ½–¾ c olive oil

Whisk together garlic, mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice and egg yolk. Slowly drizzle in olive oil, whisking constantly, until desired thickness is reached. Adjust seasoning.

When it comes to Spanish bar food, I don’t need much more than a plate full of jamón serrano to accompany a few cañas of beer. But for Martha, there is no better tapa than the croqueta: a deep fried little log of gooey delight (beer doesn’t hurt here either). Always looking for ways to please, and not exactly hating croquetas either, I recently fried up a couple of batches using two different recipes for Martha’s and my own enjoyment.

I made my first batch of croquetas using the classic technique (my base recipe came from Penelope Casa’s Delicioso: The Regional Cooking of Spain). The first step is to make a very thick bechamel: my roux consisted of 6 tablespoons of olive oil and ¾ cup of flour to which I added 2 cups of milk over medium heat. In preparing the bechamel I learned that a lumpy roux that just won’t break up can be remedied with the magic of a food processor, a most satisfying action after 5 minutes of uselessly hunting lumps with a whisk.

Lots of fillings can go in croquetas, but salt cod and cheese are two very popular options. Since we were fresh out of salt cod, I decided to go the cheese route. Obviously, a Spanish cheese  would have been appropriate, but I was not interested in going to the store, so instead I folded a handful of cheap provolone into my cooked sauce with salt and pepper for good measure.

As I mentioned earlier, croquetas are shaped like small logs. But how to give shape to liquid bechamel sauce? The answer is to chill it. Most recipes seem to recommend chilling the bechamel overnight before proceeding. Crunched for time, I got away with just an hour and a half of chilling.

After the bechamel was cold enough to work, I formed pinches of it into cylinders and placed them on a plate. Then, it was time to bread: separate dishes of flour, eggs, and bread crumbs and a fanatical observance of “wet hand, dry hand” rule make this a clean and efficient process. As the croquetas were breaded I placed them on a sheet pan to wait for their date with destiny—a pot full of 350°F oil.

Croquetas don’t take long to fry, just a few minutes until the breading is golden. If they sit in the oil too long, there’s a risk of the filling exploding out of the breading. They are best eaten very hot, washed down with the aforementioned beer.

We also enjoyed a few other Spanish standards: tortilla española, jamón (ok, prosciutto, but what can you do?) and aged goat cheese.

Making these must have given me the croqueta bug, because just over a week later I was hauling out the oil again for another round. This time, though, I used a recipe from the New York Times that was less traditional: rather than a bechamel, these croquetas were based on leftover mashed potatoes (the recipe was originally published in anticipation of Thanksgiving leftovers). It happened that I had a large amount of mashed potatoes left over from Martha’s birthday and this recipe sitting on my desktop for the past year and a half; it was a croqueta perfect storm, really. I made the recipe as described in the Times, again substituting prosciutto for jamón (but really, there is no substitute).

If using leftover mashed potatoes seems too convenient and not a little questionable to you, your suspicions are well-warranted. These croquetas had good flavors and were a good way to use up leftovers, but the heavy mashed potatoes just can’t compete with gooey, creamy fried béchamel. All considerations of time and convenience aside, I’d take traditional croquetas every time. But in any case, there’s plenty of room in our lives for all kinds of croquetas.

And therein lies the real joy of making croquetas at home: if you order them in a restaurant, you can expect three to five to a plate accompanied by a crazy urge to order more. Too much of this can break the bank. At home, relatively cheap ingredients are transformed into enough fried goodness to satiate anybody’s croqueta cravings.