Croquettes avec Bacon and Mozzarella

Between posting status on Facebook and keeping the foodblog up, I am finding out that I have been forgetting to update "which ones!?"... Some people are online 24x7.   My threshold for online  after work is...who knows...much less than a year ago.

This is my concoction ... After seeing so many different new recipes being whipped into the new "fusion" style of this and that why not this?  I thought.   

Ingredients:

About 4 nice medium size potatoes.  Scrubbed and washed.  Boiled till cooked through - e.g. To check doneness - Stick a wooden chopsticks in without resistance.   You know how to boil potatoes right?

Run the potatoes under faucet and "slide" the peels off.  Mash them in a bowl.

Sliced Mozzarella.  The size that would be enclosed in your croquettes.  I buy a large block and cut it myself.   Unused portions are vacuum packed and refrigerated.

Prepare natural no nitrate Bacon in George Foreman's hamburger grill.  Break them into pieces that would fit into croquettes. About 1 to 1-1/2 inches.

1/2---1/4 tsp salt (optional because you are sandwiching Bacon and Mozzarella that are already salted) 

Black Pepper or white pepper

2 to 3 C PANKO bread crumbs in a large rimmed plate/dish

1---2 C flour for dipping, season it with some chili flakes, tiny pinch of lavender flakes, any other spices you want

2 to 3 large eggs.  Beat 2 eggs in a flat rimmed dish.  Add some spices, if you like.  Reserve one for later use, if needed.

Deep frying pan filled  with EVOO

Deep fryer tongue

Large receiving plate lined with Tempura papers. 

Depending on the size of croquettes you want to make, Take 1/3 C of mashed potatoes in the palm of one hand.  First make it into a snow ball then flatten it into an oval shape then place a pieces of bacons and Mozzarella and top with mashed potatoes to enclose it.  Flatten and form it into oval shape.  

Set aside and do the same for the rest.  

Heat the frying oil.  Drop a piece of mashed potato or panko.  If it starts dancing in the oil and floating, the oil is ready for frying.  Maintain medium low heat...about 325--350'F.  All you are doing is to brown the Panko--the outer shell (without burning, of course).   Coat the prepared croquette with flour, then in egg, then in Panko and fry till Golden brown.  You can also dip it in egg, then flour, egg again, then Panko to make a sturdy outer shell, if you want.

This one is without the  bacon.