cook: japanese fried foods

I'd been staring at a kabocha squash Patrick had harvested for a couple weeks now, wondering what to cook with it. In the past I always made soup with such gourds, but I've been wanting to cook tempura, which I'd never made before. I microwaved the squash for 3 minutes before cutting it in half. I put one half in the fridge and then sliced the other half into thin slices. I also peeled and sliced a sweet potato. For the tempura dipping sauce, I dug into my Asian box for the kombu (kelp) soup base and bonito flakes, which I simmered in water before straining and reserving this dashi or Japanese soup stock.                      

 

The dipping sauce was made by simmering the dashi with mirin (you can use sugar if you don't have mirin) and a bit of soy sauce. I also simmered jasmine rice before setting up the fry station. I beat an egg with a cup of ice water and then sifted a cup of all-purpose flour with a strainer into the beaten egg and ice water. In addition to defrosting shrimp, I marinated a couple of chicken thighs in grated ginger and garlic, Chardonnay(because I didn't have sake), and soy sauce and then dusted the chicken in potato starch. I also ran to the store to get broccoli and cauliflower florets and cooking oil--I feel like during the height of the pandemic, I rarely made a trip to the grocery store if I didn't have ingredients and mostly made do with what was on hand.

  

Instead of using my cast iron, I heated vegetable oil in my stockpot to 340 to 355 degrees F. Tempura frying is so different from frying other foods in that I couldn't tell how long to cook vegetables and meat. Whereas I usually brown until golden, with tempura, the batter is so light that I wasn't sure how long to fry as it remains light colored throughout. I could tell the cauliflower and broccoli were done because of the browning in the stems which didn't have tempura batter. At least I knew when to pull the chicken out of the fryer by color.

 

I laid out all the vegetables, shrimp and chicken on the stove for a serve it yourself dinner. We really need to get back to eating family style on the dining table rather than on the coffee table in front of the television, but then again, that's us.

 

The shrimp and vegetables tempura and the chicken karaage came out crispy.

 

And dinner was late an hour and half, but hubs mindfully didn't complain as I had been laboring so hard in the kitchen. 

And Patrick declared afterward that he enjoyed dinner, and so I didn't mind that cooking was hot, sweaty and long as plates came back to the sink empty. However, next time, I just want to go to Izakaya Mai or Santa Ramen like I used to before the pandemic.