Japanese croquettes:korokke

I´ve always been curious about how the Japanese have taken recipes from the rest of the world---and adapted them.

Being a huge lover of croquettes, I wanted to try this Japanese recipe out. Speaking of adaptations, why doesn´t english have an English word for "croquette"? I´ll admit that in all my years living in the US I didn´t see any at supermarkets, so I guess that that must be it. Here in Spain, you can´t leave a frozen foods section without seeing at least 5 different kinds of croquettes, of different brands. I wish we imported American "tater tots" and "hash browns"..... Spaniards should learn the addtional wonders of new potato fried/oven baked wonders.

Anyhow, the first thing that I noticed from this recipe is that it doesn´t use bechamel filling. It uses potato filling--which really brings to mind my grandma´s home-made cod croquettes. For cod croquettes, a potato base is used instead of bechamel; making them denser than regular ones.

The second thing I noticed was the size and shape--they´re a lot larger than regular croquettes, and they´re flattened out into patties instead of left oval-shaped.

Spanish version "croquetas"

Japanese version "Korokke"

I used this recipe: Japanese Korokke. It´s actually pretty simple and basic, you don´t need a lot of ingredients.....it´s just time-consuming. More time-consuming than I´d thought, actually (I have no idea why I was surprised, regular croquettes are even more time consuming since you need to freeze the bechamel before you can even roll it in beten egg, flour and breadcrumbs...). We ended up eating at 15.15 or so instead of the 14.30-14.45 I´d planned. But it was absolutely worth it.....to counter the fried korokke, we ate them with a side of salad. Yum. They were delicious.

Here´s the initial meat-and-onion mix, which was yummy in itself.

I boiled the potatoes in a regular pot. Next time, for speed, I´ll use out other one.

No pics of the in-between steps (my hands were too sticky), but here they are right out of the fryer.

Last picture of them, draining excess oil. I made, oh....about three times this amount. We´re a hungry family (and I´m bad at calculating amounts)

I would really recommend trying to make them, the patties are very fun to try.....the only problem is that, being made out of potato, the base can´t be frozen (unlike bechamel), but it can still be refrigerated to use another day if you have any left over (as I´ve done). 

Have you ever tried korokke? Or croquettes? What do you think?