Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Tempering Tempura

A few weeks ago, Kendall and I had a mad hankering for some Japanese fare. Kendall spent 9 months in Japan, and craves it from time to time. Obviously, it was time for a trip to our local Japanese grocer, Asahi Imports. The store is small, but stuffed with all sorts of yummy treats! We picked up instant miso soup, vegetable curry sauce, ramen, snack nori, some furikake, and some tempura batter mix! This was going to be good.



It was raining and cool (yay!) so we started the evening off with some miso soup. After a crazy hunt for a decent skimmer for our frying adventure, we settled in and started chopping veggies, rinsing shrimp and octopus, and drying them. Then we mixed the batter, dipped the food, and started frying.



The results were delicious. We ate and ate until we were stuffed. We paired it with a nice chilled Chardonnay from California, which was refreshing, crisp, and a little sweet against the hot tempura. Not the most healthy meal, for sure, but a really great adventures. Behold! Photos:









Squid: dry it before you fry it, people!




Soak it up!



Tempura Success!



2 comments:

david said...

I always see the instant miso soup and wonder if it's worth a shot, I guess I won't resist next time I'm at the store!

Laura said...

@ david: It is. I need to try miso from scratch, and will post about that attempt and try to compare the two. The instant miso has goodies like seaweed, green onions, croutons, etc.