JAPANESE RESTAURANTS -- TEMPURA ____________________________________________________________ Tempura is, in many ways, an archetypal Japanese food. All the essential qualities of Japanese cuisine are reflected in its preparation: the use of absolutely fresh ingredients, the artful presentation, and the perfection of technique by a skilled chef. The result is one of the triumphs of Japanese cooking -- a fried food that is light and fresh-tasting rather than heavy and greasy. It's a cooking style in which the essence of the ingredient itself completely defines the taste. It comes as a surprise to most foreigners to learn that tempura was not originally a Japanese dish; it actually owes its origins to the visiting Portuguese missionaries of the sixteenth century. But tempura, like many imported ideas, gradually adapted itself to Japanese needs and tastes. By the late nineteenth century tempura was a popular fast food in Tokyo, sold from sidewalk stalls and roaming pushcarts, and today's modern tempura (made by deep-frying vegetables, fish and shellfish) is no longer a foreign food at all, but a completely Japanese cuisine. Preparation Seafood and vegetables are the raw materials of tempura, and only the freshest specimens are used. It's not unusual to see live shrimps jumping around on the preparation counter, or buckets of slithering eels being carted through the kitchen. In addition to using the freshest ingredients, the next most important factor in good tempura is the quality of the batter, which is made from eggs, flour, and ice water. The batter shouldn't be mixed too thoroughly, but should be lumpy and full of air bubbles. To achieve this consistency the batter is made up in small batches immediately before it's used, and each batch is thrown away when it starts to settle. The vegetables and seafood are cut, washed, dried, and dipped in the batter to give them a thin, almost transparent coating. After this they're dropped one at a time into the oil (a combination of vegetable and sesame oil), which must be constantly kept at exactly the right temperature. Finally, the tempura must be cooked for just the right amount of time, pulled out of the oil the precise moment it's done. If all goes well, the final product is perfect tempura -- crisp, golden brown, hot, and delicious. A few tempura restaurants offer variations on the basic recipe, adding extra ingredients to the batter to change the texture or flavor. One variation is to add chopped noodles to the batter for a rougher and crisper coating. As you can see, making tempura is a delicate process, and lots of things can go wrong. It's possible to find many different levels of quality in restaurant tempura, ranging from fairly bad (too greasy) to absolutely perfect (heavenly). As a general rule, tempura tends to be better at specialty restaurants rather than at all-purpose Japanese restaurants. Ordering and Eating Tempura can usually be ordered by the piece, but many people prefer the more economical set meal (teishoku). The teishoku includes several varieties of tempura, plus rice, pickles, and soup. Various sizes of teishoku are available, differing in the number of pieces of tempura. The most popular seafood items include prawns, squid, shrimp, scallops, kisu (a type of smelt), and other kinds of fish. Many varieties of vegetable are also available, including eggplant, lotus root, green pepper, sweet potato, squash, shiitake mushroom, onion, shiso (perilla) leaf, and carrot. Usually some seasonal fishes are offered as well, depending on the time of year. The first rule of eating tempura is to get it while it's hot. If you're sitting at the counter, the chef will transfer each piece directly from the vat of hot oil to the counter in front of you, placing it on a sheet of white paper to drain off the excess oil. Even if you're sitting at a table, every effort will be made to get your tempura to you as hot as possible. You can show your appreciation by eating it as soon as you can (although you might want to wait a minute or two to avoid burning your mouth). When you use the dipping sauce, it's a good idea to dip the tempura quickly and avoid lengthy soaking. The sauce may come with a small mound of grated radish, which can be mixed in. Some tempura fans forgo the dipping sauce entirely, using just a bit of salt or lemon for seasoning. _________________________________________________________________ TEMPURA SAMPLE MENU Note: Uppercase letters represent long vowel sounds. (See pronunciation guide below.) Set Meals tenpura teishoku assorted pieces of tempura with rice, soup and pickles tenpura kOsu a larger assortment of tempura pieces, usually with rice, soup, pickles and dessert tenpura moriawase chef's selection of tempura pieces (kisetsu) yasai moriawase assortment of (seasonal) vegetable tempura kakiage teishokudiced shrimp fried tempura-style, with rice, soup and pickles tendontempura-fried prawns over rice A la Carte Seafood Note: Seafood and vegetables vary according to the season. * anago -- conger eel * ayu -- sweetfish * ebi -- shrimp * kuruma-ebi -- prawn * shiba-ebi -- prawn * hamaguri -- clam * haze -- goby * hotategai -- scallops * ika -- squid * kaki -- oyster (winter) * (ebi) kakiage -- diced shrimp and leek fried tempura-style * ika kakiage -- diced squid fried tempura-style * kaibashira kakiage -- scallop valve muscles * kani -- crab * kisu -- sillago (fish) * megochi -- flathead (fish) * shako -- mantis shrimp * shirauo -- whitebait (fish) * wakasagi -- freshwater smelt * yamame -- brown river trout-isobemaki -- wrapped in dried seaweed and fried-norimaki -- same as -isobemaki A la Carte Vegetables (kisetsu) yasai -- (seasonal) vegetablesasupara -- asparagus-ebizume -- stuffed with shrimp fuki no tO -- coltsfoot buds (spring) gobO -- burdock root kabocha -- squashnasu -- eggplantnattO -- sticky, fermented soybean paste ninjin -- carrot nori -- dried black seaweed pIman -- green pepperatsuma imo -- sweet potatoitake -- Japanese mushroom shishitO -- small Japanese green pepper shiso -- perilla leavesshungiku (no ha) -- chrysanthemum leaves (autumn) takenoko -- bamboo shoots (spring) * tamanegi -- onion * tara no me -- angelica tree buds (spring) ____________________________________________________________