Tempura batter - yeast-risen

[Breadandwine Profile Website]

"Tempura - vegetables and seafood dipped in batter and deep-fried"

"The word "tempura", or the technique of dipping fish and vegetables into a batter and frying them, comes from the word "tempora", a Latin word meaning "times", "time period"..." (Wiki)

And I always thought it a Japanese technique!

I've been looking at some recipes for this online - and I'm amazed at how complicated some of the recipes are.

I made a yeast-risen batter last night, which took a couple of minutes, put it one side whilst I prepared the items I was going to deep fry - vegan sausage and polony - and got cracking straight away,

The results were exactly what I was looking for - the batter was light and crisp and tasty.

I've only once tried this before - a long time ago - but I'll be doing this a lot more in future.

The recipe, plus a pic, is here on my blog:

http://nobreadisanisland.blogspot.co.uk ... sages.html

Cheers, Paul

[hungryhousewife Profile]

Hi Paul! I thought I had replied to this earlier, but it must have fizzled out somewhere!

I made a really good tempura batter using gluten free flour and a bit of lager. I also added some salt, pepper, cayenne and turmeric - didn't combine too much.

The rice flour in the GF blend is, I think, what makes it so crunchy. It really is the very yummiest tempura batter I've ever made, and it takes only seconds to whip up!
HH

[Renée Profile]

I love to make prawn and vegetable tempura to accompany teriyaki chicken.

It's interesting that Tempura was introduced to Japan in the mid-sixteenth century by Portuguese Jesuits, during the same period that panko and such dishes as tonkatsu were also introduced from Portugal. Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, reportedly loved tempura. Didn't the Portuguese first introduce chilli to India?

[Breadandwine Profile Website]

Interesting stuff!

I made this again tonight, using 2/3rds of the amount - but the batter was much thinner than last time. I thickened it with 40g of rice flour, but it was difficult to tell if it made any difference to the crispness or the flavour - it was just the same, it seemed.

I wanted something sweet, afterwards, so I thinned out the batter and made a large pancake. Then I took a couple of slices of tinned peaches - which we had in the fridge - chopped them up with a dessertspoon of marmalade and blitzed this in the microwave. To this I added a small glug of Benedictine and spread the filling down the centre of the pancake, folded it up and had it with some soya cream.

Absolutely gorgeous!

[Breadandwine Profile Website]

...Didn't the Portuguese first introduce chilli to India?

Hi Renée

That's one version. Just found this on Wikipedia:

"From Mexico, at the time the Spanish colony that controlled commerce with Asia, chili peppers spread rapidly into the Philippines and then to India, China, Indonesia, Korea and Japan. They were incorporated into the local cuisines.
An alternate account for the spread of chili peppers is that the Portuguese got the pepper from Spain, and cultivated it in India"

Cheers, Paul

[Edited to get your name right! ]

[Renée Profile]

Thanks, that's interesting, Paul!

Please don't worry about my name! It gets pronounced and spelled many different ways.