Vegetable Tempura



The wrong way to serve tempura.



Saturday night, the Gastronomist Economist and I convened for our monthly cooking session. I planned to make cupcakes for a birthday party, so I let the GE pick our dinner menu. "Let's make tempura!" she said.

I am a deep-frying newbie, having only received a deep fry thermometer a few months before. (The thermometer made its debut at Hanukkah, when I made apple fritters.) I continue to be astonished at how quickly food cooks in its hot oil bath and how delectably crisp and tender it becomes.

We used vegetables we already had on hand: onions, zucchini, green beans, carrots, and mushrooms.



The recipe the GE brought left a little to be desired. For example, it made no mention of how long you're supposed to fry the vegetables. Still, everything we fried was delicious, no matter how long we left it in the oil.

The first pieces were as crisp and delicious as we could have hoped. Then we made the fatal mistake of trying to cook all the remaining vegetables before sitting down to eat. Perhaps this wouldn't have been such a mistake if we'd transferred the cooked pieces to a tray in a warm oven after draining. Unfortunately, we just piled them up on a splatter screen. By the time we were ready to feast, our vegetables were limp, flaccid caricatures of tempura.


All things considered, though, I'd make this again, especially for a sushi party!