Tempura

Serves 4

TEMPURA BATTER:

1 egg
1 cup ice water
1 cup all purpose flour, sifted

Preparing Egg Mixture:
Beat an egg in a bowl. Add ice water in the bowl. Be sure to use very cold water. Add sifted flour in the bowl and mix lightly. Be careful not to overmix the batter.

*Use ice water for the batter. This is really important to prevent the batter from absorbing too much oil. Do Not Overmix!*

Step-By-Step Procedure

Remove heads and shells from shrimps without removing tails. Devein the shrimps.
Make two or three incisions in the stomach sides of the shrimps.

Lightly press the back of shrimps by fingers.

Using a knife, remove the dirt from the tails of shrimps.

Dry shrimps on paper towels.

Mix eggs and ice water in a bowl.
(Add ice cubes in the bowl to minimize oil absorption)

Add flour in the egg mixture. Lightly mix the batter (Do Not OverMix.

Flour shrimps.Heat vegetable oil to 340F degree in a deep pan.

*To check the temperature of the oil, drop a little tempura batter into the oil. If the batter comes up right away instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan, it's about 360F (temp in cooking shrimp tempura). If the batter goes halfway to the bottom and comes up, it's about 340F (temp in cooking vegetable tempura. If you are frying both seafood and vegetables, fry vegetables first. Then, fry seafood.

Pick the tail of shrimp and dip shrimp in the tempura batter. Immediately fry the shrimp until crisp. Serve tempura shrimp right away with tempura dipping sauce.

TEMPURA SAUCE:

1 bouillon cubes
1 c hot water
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
3 tbsp grated radish

Prepare stock, drop bouillon cubes in water in a small saucepan and boil. Add soy sauce, sugar, and ginger; stir in grated radish.

*I remember before, during our cooking class we used 1c of apple juice instead of bouillon stock. no sugar(since apple juice is already sweet) just kikkoman soy sauce and grated radish... I have no exact measurement for this but it did taste good.