This year's VIII National Ham Croquette Contest has been a bit special: the winners of the previous editions of the contest have competed to choose the Croquette Champion of Champions and thus celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Madrid Fusión gastronomic congress.
There were seven candidates (although six have been presented) and only one could win: Diego Fernández from the Regueiro Restaurant (Tox, Asturias); Jesús Segura from the Trivio Restaurant (Cuenca), Nacho Solana from the Solana Restaurant (Ampuero, Cantabria), Miguel Carretero from the Santerra Restaurant (Madrid), Alberto García Escudero from the Iván Cerdeño Restaurant (Toledo) and Javier Sanz and Juan Sahuquillo from the Cañitas Maite Restaurant ( Casas Ibáñez, Albacete), who won the award in 2021.
Miguel Carter (Santerra).
“A well-made croquette is haute cuisine”, sentenced during the tasting José Carlos Capel, president of the jury made up of other gastronomy experts such as Daniel Salas, Clara Villalón, Marcelino Alonso or Javi Antoja, who have tasted the six creations to settle such a dispute, one of the most heated in Madrid Fusión. at the time, sowed controversy with a "now they make better croquettes than in the time of our grandmothers because more cooking techniques are applied".
And the winner was the croquette that won in 2018: that of the Madrid restaurant Santerra, that of the chef Miguel Carretero, who has thus won the Croqueta Champion of Champions award, a contest sponsored by Joselito at the Madrid Fusión 2022 gastronomic congress.
We asked the chef how the Santerra croquette has evolved since 2018: "Any recipe has to be alive and keep changing to improve. We, after winning that year, found a much more balanced croquette, We saw that we liked the concept better and we modified it. We even incorporated another change yesterday."
How is the winning croquette? "It is a classic croquette, since we have very carefully calculated the roux so that the flour does not brown too much, we use a milk with a higher percentage of fat, we add the ham at 65 degrees and also cream. We coat it in flour, pasteurized egg and panko," explains to Condé Nast Traveler.
If you want to try the Croquette Champion of Champions you can do it in Santerra, both in its bar and in the gastronomic restaurant, where It is priced at €2.20 per unit or €13.2 for a portion of six. Miguel Carretero warns us that they also usually send it home, but that during these days they will pause the delivery of their croquette due to the high demand that is expected.
The croquetero contest of Madrid Fusión 2022 has also served to pay homage to chef Iván Cerdeño from Toledo: the chef of the homonymous restaurant has received the Croqueta de Oro award in recognition of the multiple times he his original croquette recipe He has led some of his finalist disciples to victory in previous editions.