Heath had previously met customers who liked mustard mixed into their rice and asked him to add mustard to it, so people who liked deep-fried shrimp paste were not all that strange.
As for shrimp paste, it was actually made by shelling shrimp, adding starch, egg whites, and the like, then repeatedly pounding the mixture to give it a firm, springy texture. It was quite popular, but properly made shrimp paste actually used rather expensive ingredients. After all, large shrimp had never been cheap, and the main ingredient in shrimp paste was shrimp meat, which had to be shelled. Only tiny amounts of starch and egg white were added, serving solely to bind the shrimp meat together without any other major purpose. This made shrimp paste relatively expensive, though there were ways to cut corners with most shrimp paste on the market-in other words, to reduce costs.
Of course, Heath disdained such tricks. For him, the only trouble was that ordinary shrimp paste needed to be pounded many times to become firm and springy. Fortunately, Heath was very strong, and after working as a chef for so long, he had the arm strength for it. He therefore completed the process as quickly as he could, though it still took five minutes. Only then could he use a knife to cut the potatoes into Pikachu shapes, hollow out a hole in the bottom, and fill it with shrimp paste before taking them to be deep-fried.
Seasoning was much simpler. Heath had already added the seasonings while pounding the shrimp paste, and their flavors had permeated it by now. At most, he only needed to spread another layer of seasoning over the potatoes. Once he had finished preparing the shrimp-paste Pikachu, Heath clapped his hands and took them to be deep-fried. Only