TUNA CROQUETTES, POTATO SALAD AND A WHALE

Hello again.

Today I'm sharing a simple recipe for the lunch I made today: tuna croquettes with papas mayo, a classic Chilean potato salad that always tastes a little like home to me.

This recipe makes 10 croquettes.

TUNA CROQUETTES

Ingredients:

• 2 cans of tuna in water (150 g each)

• 1 medium onion

• 1/2 red bell pepper

• 2 sprigs of fresh basil

• 4 eggs

• 2 tablespoons of flour

• 6 tablespoons of oats

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper

Preparation:

Chop the onion, bell pepper, and basil.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl until well combined. Let the mixture rest for about 15 minutes (or longer, if life—or a short film—gets in the way).

Before shaping the croquettes, check the consistency. The mixture should hold together without falling apart. If it feels too runny, add an extra egg or a little more oats.

Shape the croquettes by hand and cook them in a pan with a little olive oil over medium heat until golden brown on both sides.

The potato mayonnaise was even easier.

Although potatoes originated in Latin America, here in Switzerland they grow some really excellent local varieties. For this salad I used small ones, which are ideal for boiling whole.

Potatoes with mayonnaise

Ingredients:

• Small potatoes (amount to taste)

• 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise (adjustable)

• Juice of 1/2 lemon

• A splash of olive oil

• Fresh cilantro

• Salt and pepper

Preparation:

Boil the potatoes for about 20 minutes, until tender. Drain the water and let them finish cooking in their own steam.

Run them under cold water to cool them, then peel them.

Cut the potatoes into medium-sized cubes and mix with fresh cilantro, mayonnaise, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

They are delicious.

One small detail: this time I didn't chop the onion or the bell pepper too finely. I was cooking quickly, and, oddly enough, I liked it better that way. The basil ended up giving it a fresh touch that I don't usually find in other croquette recipes.

Tuna croquettes and a whale

Cooking tuna reminded me of a film by Béla Tarr, whom I had the opportunity to meet a few years ago during the presentation of Werckmeister Harmonies at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.

Actually, I didn't remember a fish, but a whale.

In the film, a massive dead whale washes ashore in a small town as social tensions begin to rise, eventually erupting into a silent revolution. For the townspeople, the whale is an extraordinary sight. Its presence held something of the miraculous, the monstrous, and the ominous all at once.

The film begins with one of the most beautiful scenes I know.

The bar is about to close. The customers, completely drunk, are still there, reluctant to leave. Then the protagonist, a young dreamer, transforms the place into a miniature solar system. He asks them to move in circles and, using their own bodies, explains the movement of the planets and an eclipse.

I have always found it to be an extraordinary scene.

It manages to explain one of the most complex and abstract movements in the universe using only a group of drunken men in a bar. Cinema has that wonderful ability to make visible what would otherwise be difficult to imagine.

The dinner table has always been a good place for deep conversations. If Béla Tarr uses a scene of drunken revelers to talk about the movement of the stars, it's no wonder that Plato chose a symposium to write one of the most important dialogues in the history of philosophy.

In The Symposium , seven speeches attempt to answer the same question: what is love? More than two thousand years later, we are still doing something similar. We gather around a table to talk about life, about film, about our fears, about politics, or about that which we still do not understand.

Perhaps that's why I like cooking for other people.

Because, in the end, food has never been just food.

Tuna croquettes and a whale.