Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura

I believe most of us know that tempura is a Japanese dish. Tempura is deep fried seafood or vegetable that are dipped into batter and enjoyed with special soy sauce. You can use any of your favorite seafood or vegetables. My favorite is shrimp, as for the vegetable I usually use green beans, cauliflower, spinach, and aubergine. Sweet potato also a good choice :D. All the vegetable should be cut into thin slices.

I've been trying to find good tempura batter recipe, as it looks simple but actually quite tricky to make. The ingredient is just flour and cold water. You can add salt, pepper or any of your favorite herbs. The key is to make the batter thin and light, and not to whisk vigorously, as the gluten will react and make the batter though. If you are using this recipe, you must immediately eat the tempura while it still hot/warm. As I am not adding any other chemical related ingredients to make it stay crunchy. It might not be as good as the store-bought one, but it is healthier at all cause. But, If you want to make it even simpler, use store-bought tempura mix, haha. 

In my opinion, as the batter is originally a little plain, the hero of the dish is the seafood, vegetables and ..the sauce! Make sure you are using fresh seafood and vegetables. Good tempura sauce really bring soul to this humble dish.

The sauce that I am making here is my version of tempura sauce, not authentic. I adjust it with my Indonesian tongue who always seeks for spice and herbs on every dish. I heard that the Japanese use daikon to their sauce, I also use it as I like daikon taste. But to give a little punch of flavor, I am adding 1 tsp of chopped onion. 

TEMPURA

INGREDIENTS:

10 shrimps, peeled with tails on

1 aubergine, thinly sliced

1 bunch of cauliflower, cut the core

100 gr grean beans
Cooking oil for deep frying

INGREDIENTS FOR SAUCE, MIX :

25gr fresh daikon, wash clean, peel the skin and grate with cheese grater

1 tsp of chopped onion (Indonesia : bawang bombay)

1/2 tsp of fresh ginger, grated

5 tbsp of soy sauce (Indonesia : kecap asin)

30-50 ml water

1/4 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp sesame oil

INGREDIENTS FOR BATTER:

Batter recipe adapted from JTT

150 gr flour (I am using mix of all purpose and low protein flour)

200 ml cold soda water

1/2 tsp salt

6 ice cubes

DIRECTIONS :

1. Prepare all the prawn and vegetable, set aside.
2. Turn on your stove, medium heat. 
3. Mix the flour and salt with whisker, then add the soda water. Quickly mix with balloon whisker. Do not overmix, if there are still some small lumps, let it be. Very important not to overmix! Add 3 ice cubes, start to dip the vegetables into the batter, and deep frying the vegetables. Add in the rest ice cubes before frying the king prawn.