All photos and illustrations created by Faith Orcino.

Welcome to the third installment of Fictional Food with Faith!

This week’s recipe came from Gido Amagakure’s hit series “Sweetness & Lightning”. I reviewed it back in 2016 and ended up collecting several of the volumes. While the story of the single father and teacher Kohei drew me in, I also wanted the manga to have a copy of the recipes.

The croquettes recipe is in Chapter 25 of Volume Five. It’s a dish I’ve always wanted to try and usually grab some to take home when stopping by the Japanese markets. There are different types people make but in this recipe, it lists the basic potato kind and one with squash and egg.

The original portions were set for two people but since I have a large family, I ended up multiplying the ingredients by four to make sure everyone gets enough. The patties were around the same size as small fist and I was trying my best to go by what Amagakure drew in the manga. It was quite a messy process mashing all the ingredients, but a handy masher made things easier. A good thing about the recipe was that the fillings must be cooked first before frying. A novice cook like myself may not be comfortable working with hot oil but having the main portion precooked removed some of the worry about any extra mishaps. Both fillings had ground meat in them but I do wonder if you can substitute or omit for a more vegetarian friendly version. The potato held more of its shape but the squash and egg mix stayed a bit wet and some of those croquettes didn’t stay solid. Still, both were delicious but definitely could use a bit more seasoning. A bit more salt and some pepper worked but a lot other combinations can be added to suit your tastes. Usually, the store-bought croquettes came with a packet of tonkatsu sauce, so I ended up using Just One Cookbook’s recipe to make my own. To be honest, it’s been quite a while since I last tasted tonkatsu sauce so I couldn’t say how true this replication was but the tang it had was a nice pairing with the fried meal. It will definitely be something I will make again in the future.

Kodansha Comics translated all 12 volumes of “Sweetness & Lightning”. Head over to their website for more information including an online preview. Crunchyroll has the anime adaptation available for streaming.

Thanks again for checking out Fictional Food with Faith!