Passionate Foodie: Vegetable Tempura

Tempura is a Japanese dish , in which vegetables are coated in batter and deep fried till golden in color.. Basically tempura is nothing but Japanese Style Pakodas.. The first time I had these Japanese tempuras was in one of the restaurants "Mekong" which serves pan-asian delicacies.. We ordered these tempuras for starters which were served with a Japanese dip known by the same name ie Tempura Sauce .. There were other dips too along with the main one placed on our table, which complimented the tempuras really well.. These tempuras were light, airy, fluffy and crisp at the same time.. These can be made with any vegetable available to you..

The main component of this dish is the batter that is made.. It is a light and airy batter made of flour and ice cold soda water.. The use of soda water is very important in making of the batter.. It makes the tempuras fluffy and light... And the cold temperature of batter is essential for making tempuras crisp and prevent the batter from absorbing too much oil.. Make the batter right at the time of frying tempuras and not before.. And most important is to not overmix the batter.. After adding the soda water to the flour, just mix lightly with the help of a fork.. A little lump here and there is absolutely fine.. If you overmix the batter, the tempuras would turn out dense and heavy, and that is not what we want..

Here I have used the vegetables that i had handy.. You can use any vegetable you like such as mushroom, zucchini, eggplant, broccoli etc etc.. I loved all the vegetables except for cauliflower.. They became soggy after sometime, while all other vegetable tempuras were crisp even after half an hour of frying.. Might be coz cauliflower had retained water in them.. So make sure you drain the water out of the vegetables really well after blanching, so that they dont turn soggy fast.. To serve with these tempuras i made a dip of soya, ginger and dash of balsamic vinegar.. It paired really well the tempuras..

Ingredients:

1 carrot

8-10 french beans trimmed

1 potato

1 capsicum

4-5 florets cauliflower

For the batter:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rice flour

2 cups ice cold soda water

Salt

Black Pepper

For the soya ginger dip:

1/2 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp grated ginger

1/4 tsp sesame oil

2tbsp soya sauce

1tbsp balsamic vinegar

Method: Mix all ingredients of Soya Ginger Dip and keep aside for around 20mins for the flavors to blend.. Cut carrot, potato, capsicum in long thin strips and blanch all the vegetables (except capsicum) in boiling water for 5mins.. You can par boil the potato strips.. Drain the vegetables and keep aside.. Mix all the ingredients of batter.. Coat the vegetables in batter and deep fry in hot oil till light golden in color..Do not fry for long.. Make sure you fry 4-5 tempuras at a time and not more.. Because the ice cold batter will get the temperature of oil down.. And hotter the oil, the tempuras will be less oily.. The vegetables are already blanched, so only the batter needs to be cooked from outside in hot oil and not the insides of tempura.. So you will not want to fry for long.. Remove on absorbent paper and serve with soya ginger dip..

Note : Make sure you use ice cold soda water.. I even kept my veggies in fridge for sometime after blanching, as i had some time in hand for frying..