Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura

Father’s day celebration, we had shrimp and vegetable tempura, Japanese salad and chicken teriyaki on the menu.  These are my husband’s favorite Japanese dishes.  Our favorite Japanese retaurant is Sushi Komasa in Little Tokyo, but we sometimes go to a place called Gin Sushi in Pasadena.  Tonight my kids told me we didn’t need to go to Gin Sushi anymore as we had Gin’s Kitchen!  🙂

I learnt how to make a good tempura batter – You must add very cold water to the batter.  Placing cold batter into hot oil is the trick that makes for fluffy and tasty tempura.  The salad dressing is amazing too, please refer to my “Japanese Salad Dressing” for the recipe.  It’s a keeper!

Ingredients:

1 1 1 8 slices 8 8

Yam Zucchini Eggplant Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) String bean Shrimp

Ingredients for Batter:

100g 2 Tablespoons 1 teaspoon 1 1 Cup

All purpose flour Cornstarch Baking soda Egg very cold water

Directions:

1. Thinly cut the vegetables.  Set aside.
2. Take off the head and shell of the shrimp but keep the tail and devein.  Set aside.
3. Mix and sift all purpose flour, baking soda and cornstarch.
4. In a mixing bowl, beat an egg and then add the cold water and mix.
5. Pour ½ of the mixed flour into egg mixture and gently mix.  Then add the remaining flour and mix.  A few lumps in the batter are fine, do not overmix.
6. Put oil into a frying pan.  When oil has preheated, dip a wooden chopstick into the oil. If the oil starts steadily bubbling, then the oil is hot enough for frying.
7. Dip vegetable into the tempura batter bowl to coat them with tempura batter then carefully put them to the oil.  Fry one side and then turn over and fry the other side.  Make sure you won’t overcrowd the frying pan as the temperature may drop.
8. It should take about 2-3 minutes to cook the vegetables, shrimp will take about 30 seconds.