Tempura on Christmas Day

This year Hiromi and I and our offspring had a first as a Christmas menu:  Tempura.  It's a Japanese food, and consists mostly of battered, deep-fried vegetables, eaten with a dipping sauce and rice.  We all love it.  We did decide, however, after seeing the total for the grocery bill when we shopped for ingredients, that there was a good reason for eating tempura during the summer when many of the star ingredients come from our own gardens.  Zucchini squash, for example, is available this time of year only in skinny little versions the size of a slim cucumber and about six inches long.  Green beans?  I've never bought them by the handful at Wal-Mart before.  Shrimp is usually served with the vegetables, but we also served chicken this year.

I'm pretty sure Hiromi is developing a bit of food snobbishness regarding the preparation of tempura, judging by his references to recipes, methods, equipment, etc. coming from "the best tempura restaurant in Japan."  I've always made it from a recipe in a cookbook we bought in Denver on our honeymoon--a comb-bound volume consisting of recipes by immigrants or expat Japanese living in the Denver area.  It's helpfully written in English and uses English measures instead of metric ones.  This Christmas, those recipes would not do.

I'm documenting some things here for posterity, since we're not all able to appreciate the details conveyed in his Japanese-language cookbook "from the best tempura restaurant in Japan." I'll also assume the use of an electric skillet or deep-fryer instead of the monstrously thick and heavy cast iron* wok-shaped, double-handled tempura fryer (also from the best tempura restaurant in Japan) Hiromi brought with him when he first came to the US.  I'll also assume that you  may wish to use a whisk and tongs where Hiromi would use cooking chopsticks.

Prepare all vegetables for frying.  Here are some suggestions:

Onions--sliced as though for topping a hamburger
Sweet peppers--either in rings or "slabs"
Zucchini and other summer squash--sliced in rounds 1/4-inch thick, or less
Green beans--tips removed and left whole
Mushrooms--left whole, or halved or quartered if very large
Sweet Potatoes--sliced thinly

If shrimp are used, make sure the shells are removed.  Removing tails is optional.  Since we used small, bite-sized shrimp, we removed the tails to avoid having to handle them at the table.

Prepare batter:

Beat eggs (two is a reasonable number for a family-sized batch)
Measure the eggs by volume and add water equal to three times the volume of eggs (for example:  if the eggs equal 1/2 cup in volume, add 1 1/2 cups of water).
Remove a portion of the egg-water mixture and put it in a separate small bowl.  Repeat as needed.
Sprinkle cake flour over the mixture and incorporate it lightly into the liquid.  Don't over-mix, and  stop mixing while some lumps remain.  A thin gravy consistency is probably about right.

The Japanese cooks in Denver emphasized keeping the batter very cold, by setting the bowl in ice water while the cooking process is underway.

Heat oil:

Any bland oil is OK, but in Japan, toasted-sesame-seed oil is preferred.  I think a good compromise is to use a bland economically-priced oil with some sesame oil added for flavor.  We heated the oil to 350 degrees.

Make a dipping sauce:

Hiromi insisted yesterday on making the dipping sauce the same way the "best tempura restaurant in Japan" makes it.  Before, we've always done it the Denver way--using a clear chicken broth base, and seasoning it with commercially prepared tempura sauce--in whatever ratio the instructions on the bottle call for.

The snobbish way to make the dipping sauce is to heat in a small amount  (a cup or two)  of water (but not to boiling) several nearly square pieces of kombu (broken from dried seaweed leaves several feet long and about 4 inches wide), with bonito (shaved smokey-flavored dried fish).  Add a little salt and soy sauce and mirin (sweet rice wine) after removing the seaweed and straining out the shaved fish.  Serve it warm in small dipping bowls for each person.

"Do you taste the delicate flavor?" Hiromi asked me while I was dipping and eating.

"I guess," I said.  "It's pretty bland."  I don't think that was the right answer.

Frying:

The chef sets up his cooking pot very near the table where people are eating.  He dips and fries and removes from the fryer at the appropriate times, and passes the latest offering around the table, usually on a paper-towel-lined plate.  Often, Hiromi counts the number of diners and then puts one piece for each person into the pot at the same time.  The next round features a different vegetable.  Dining in this way is leisurely and fair, with optimally-freshly-prepared food.  When everything has been offered once, Hiromi may begin taking special orders.  Onions is a favorite at our family meals.

Eating:

After dipping the tempura in the sauce, eat it with plain rice.  I like placing the vegetable on top of the rice and eating some of each in the same bite.  If you get the kind of rice that has been coated with gluten, it will stick together enough to eat it with chopsticks.  Otherwise?  Not a chance that chopsticks will work.  Use a fork.

Cooking and eating tempura works best in fairly small groups--eight or less.   As I've already mentioned, eating the meal during the gardening season is easiest on the pocketbook.  Being able to cook outside has the benefit of having any cooking oils from the frying dissipating in the outdoor air rather than collecting on interior surfaces--another disadvantage of Christmas Day timing, when cooking indoors is a given.

Maybe someday next summer we'll have to host a bring-your-own-veggies backyard fry party.  I'm sure we can come up with a good alternative menu for Christmas Day.

*Hiromi says the fryer was made by mixing sand with the molten iron, to create minute holes throughout, producing a porous material that would retain some oil in its mass.  It's thick walls (more than 1/4-inch) are designed to hold the heat at a constant temperature.