May I have…

…your attention…

…please.

Thanks.

I haven’t eaten tempura in quite a long time – since before I went in for surgery to remove the tumor that had latched on to my tongue. On Friday, I made an offhand remark to my mom and sister that we should have tempura Saturday evening. At home, of course. I’m a huge fan of tempura. When I would go out for sushi, my first course would always be tempura at Yoshi’s: vegetables and shrimp, in a convenient size that would not fill me up to the point where I couldn’t then stuff my face with a few rolls.

These days, I can’t eat as much in one sitting as I used to, no doubt due to that whole eating through a tube thing for a year. Still, I can eat small portions, and tempura is perfect for that.

I decided on a variety of vegetables: fresh green beans, sweet onions, peppers, mushrooms.

Some zucchini.

And sweet potatoes.

There needed to be some protein in there as well, so I added some shrimp.

I’ve never made tempura at home before. I suppose it was always much easier to just go out to eat it. but I have to say that the process is not that difficult (if you handle the batter properly, and have all the mise en place set up), and the rewards are excellent.

The one thing you can’t do when cooking this is walk away. Line up the food, the flour, the batter, the oil, and keep the assembly line going.

The food goes in the oil for a very short time – after all, we’re not frying it to death here.

A quick rest on a rack was all that was needed. We ate it almost as fast as it came out of the oil, with a typical dipping sauce – minus the dashi, which we couldn’t find anywhere in this town. I hear the Internet ordering calling my name for that.

We’ll be doing this again for Superbowl Sunday in a couple of weeks. Interested in some tempura goodness? Drop on by.