Every Sunday morning before noon, as a child, I will take a shopping basket and skip hop all the way to "KORO'KE YA-SAN" - Croquettes shop. I will stand outside this large glass window and watch the cook make croquettes. KORO'KE is what we call it in Japan. Then, I skip hop all the way home with the hot KORO'KE' in the basket. Just like other children, finger foods are the coolest, I thought. The KORO'KE in Japan is shaped like the MacDonald's fried hash brown - flat, large oval shape. The mashed potatoes are mixed with some chopped onion and some ground meat in it, etc, that I have no idea of the rest, but they taste creamy, comforting, and filling. I didn't care for the meat in it or the chopped onions back then. Since they are barely present in each fried KORO'KE, it didn't matter. I just ate around them.
Monday evening, I fried some Manchego Croquettes from the Spanish cuisine - Tapas menu. The grated Manchego cheese tasted mild with a slight pungent smell (to me). Mixing it in with the mashed potatoes, it enhanced the natural UMAMI flavor of the potatoes. Chopped onions and flat-leaf parsley from my garden complimented the sweetness of the potatoes, and I enjoyed it without any tomato sauce or the bolognese sauce, but... I like to use the traditional TONKATSU sauce - very thick fruity Japanese Worcestershire sauce. I need to remember, however, that the preferred shape of the croquettes will be the bite size the next time, instead of the biggie size I made to look like the KORO'KE -- greedy. I couldn't eat anything else after eating one.
