Recipe: Sweet potato croquetas

This croqueta recipe comes from a new Latin cookbook my friend gave us for our wedding. Then I kind of tweaked it around and re-invented it. Ohhh, this makes me miss Spanish food (even though the book recipe is from Cuba)! 

Croquetas!

Ingredients:
~ Pinch of salt and pepper
~ Pinch of cayenne powder
~ 1/3 cup flour
~ 2 lbs of sweet potatoes (or regular potatoes)
~ About 5 slices of ham
~ 1/2 of medium sized white onion, diced
~ 1/3 cup of diced zucchini
~ 1/4 cup of diced olives (I used purple salty ones they have in Peru, but green will work fine too)
~ 1/3 cup of cheese
~ 1 1/2 cup bread crumbs
~ 1 large egg
~ vegetable oil for frying
*cut all veggies, ham & cheese very tiny (about 1/4 of a dime size). They will be the filling.

Chop it

Directions:

Mash it

1. Peel and boil sweet potatoes. Let cool and smash with fork until smooth. Mix in egg, flour, and spices.

2. Cube and cook onions and zucchini.

3. Cube ham, olives, and cheese.

                        4. Mix cooked and raw filling ingredients.

Flour may help it not stick to your hand

5. Now take a spoonful of your dough mixture and flatten in your hand. Place a dime size amount of filling and seal up.  Roll in bread crumbs.

Ready for frying

Just a few at a time

6. In a deep frying pan, add about an inch of vegetable oil and heat. Place a few in at a time and make sure all sides are well browned on all sides. They should take about 5 minutes each.

7. Repeat process until they are complete, or save the mixture in the fridge and make more later.

            8. Set on plate with paper towel to absorb excess oil.

                    9. Voila! Serve as an appetizer or even a side dish.




A few helpful tips:
 * All filling ingredients should be chopped very finely, since they will be inside the small croquetas.
 * Opt for oblong, not circles. After a few trials, I found that oblong shapes cook more easily than circles in the frying process.
 * While I like my marshmellows lightly browned, that's not the case with these ones. You know they're done frying when they're a darker brown color. Otherwise, the cheese doesn't melt and there's not a flaky exterior.
  * This recipe is said to make 20 croquetas. Maybe I made them small but I could have gotten about 40!