...
WASHOKU: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, 2005) provides a solid foundation to the principles and practice of washoku (balance and harmony) in the kitchen and at table. This workshop page enables me to guide you further.  
 
Lesson EIGHTEEN:
(smashed) OSEMBEI
(kudaké ) sembei 砕け煎餅
nothing goes to waste in the Japanese kitchen!

I LOVE osembei rice crackers! But they chip, break, crack and get crushed, easily. Stores will sometimes have specials on bags of osembei that were broken in shipping. These crackers -- called  waré (broken) or kudaké (smashed) sembei -- are intended for ordinary household use; they are not offered to guests, or given as gifts to others.

Crush broken and/or soggy crackers into a coarse meal to make a TERRIFIC binder for ground meat – much tastier than plain breadcrumbs. Use the meal to make meatloaf, burgers… or the spicy sembei sliders, below.
SPICY SMASHED-SEMBEI SLIDERS
七味唐辛子
shichimi tōgarashi (fiery 7-spice blend)
black sesame, chinpi (dried mikan or yuzu peel), asa no mi (flax seed), keshi no mi (white poppy seed)
aka tōgarashi (red chili pepper), sanshō (fragrant pepper) ao nori (sea herb)
I welcome your feedback -- especially captioned photos with a brief description of your kitchen sessions when you try making the recipes posted here or in WASHOKU.
Those interested in offering feedback, please download a set of guidelines for submitting and displaying your work. To further teaching goals, I may post some of the feedback to this site, adding my commentary.