Tempura

Ha ha ha. His kitchen is a mess.

I made tempura tonight and I didn't do what this guy does.

I mixed 50% flour 50% cornstarch and dusted my shrimp and vegetables so the batter adheres better. Then poured half a beer into the bowl of powders to form a cold thin bubbling batter. Shallow fried. And that's it. 

The only complication was photographing the steps. 

I watched a Japanese cook while he was working doing this same thing of building out the coating by drizzling batter onto the shrimp as they were frying so that the batter splatters in bizarre patterns that extend from the shrimp sort of like legs and antenna. Extra batter all over the place. But I don't want to do that. For me, a thin coating is fine. Thinner than what you might think with, say, fried chicken.

This is fun to do with other people. I did this a lot and the other people always had fun. They got to choose their own things to fry. We had fun experimenting and seeing what happens. We tried everything. All kinds of fish, chicken and pork. We tired every vegetable available with interesting results. Some people favored mushrooms, others favored jalapeño strips, another one's favorite thing turned out to be sweet potato pre-cooked in the microwave for a few minutes. 

This time I used half the beer for the batter and drank the second half. That's the first half a beer that I've had in six months. It's not bad at all. There's one beer left from last summer. I'm going to have to go down and get another 6-pack.

The dipping sauce is excellent.

* 1/2 cup kombu/bonito dashi

* 2 teaspoons mirin

* 1 teaspoon fish sauce

* 1 shallow teaspoon sugar

* 2 teaspoons rice vinegar

* 3 teaspoons soy sauce. 

No toasted sesame seed oil and no sake this time. And no chile flakes this time.