Japanese !

Fresh from my attempt at cooking Thai (which didn't go too badly at all), I decided that tonight I would do Japanese.

The Menu

Miso Soup

Ebi and Sweet Potato Tempura

Japanese Rice

Dish 1 - Miso Soup

Anyone can mix paste with water, so I decided to make it a little fancier.

Ingredients: Miso paste, half a white onion, enoki mushroom, tofu, nori

METHOD:

1. Don't worry, you only have to chop the onion roughly into cubes; it won't take very long and therefore, won't leave you all weepy. Put them in a pot with some oil, and saute for awhile. Use only a wee bit of oil or your soup be really oily.

2. Pour in some water quickly while standing as far as you possibly can from the pot. There will be a slight cackle and pop from the initial contact of the water with the pot.

3. Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer for about half an hour.

4. Add miso paste, nori, tofu and enoki mushroom. Stir till cooked. If you find that the nori and enoki mushroom are a little too chunky, you can do what I did. Which is to take a pair of scissors, put it into the pot and just snap randomly.

5. Tada, ready to serve !

Dish 2 - Tempura

Ah, this one takes lots of skill. One which I have yet to master. But I'll try, try again. You can use anything you want, but I used sweet potato and prawns today.

INGREDIENTS

Sweet potato

Prawns

Tempura flour

Tempura dipping sauce

Check out this mother-of-all sweet potatoes, it was ginormous !

And it took me a good 15minutes to slice it all like so. I kid you not, this takes some real arm strength. Lucky for me, handygirl Kim has been working out by way of assembling my Ikea furniture. Ignore the darker-coloured ones in the foreground, those are steamed sweet potatoes that were left over from my mom's lunch.

Prawns, which should be curled like so for optimum freshness.

It occurred to me as I was taking the prawns out of the packet that tempura prawns are usually served straight. By that logic, the me-before-learning-that-fresh-prawns-are-curled would have gone straight for the stretched out prawns. But now that I know better, I had another dilemma on my hands. How does one get their prawns straight ?

So naturally, I googled it.

Literally.

"How to straighten tempura prawns"

And what do you know. I'm not the only one who wonders that !

I came across a few sites which basically told me to make 2-3 slits at the bottom of the prawn. So I did. But that didn't make removing the veins very easy at all, so I decided to just slit the whole of the bottom. What is the deal with 2-3 slits anyway. By the time you do that, you've practically slit the whole bottom.

2 to 3 prawns in, I noticed another black thing dangling off the top portion of the prawn. I didn't realise there was another one at the top ! I guess you learn something new everyday. Anyway, de-veining prawns isn't something I normally do. I only did it because they said to do so in the recipes I came across. I never really saw the point to it though.

Once all that's prepared, we can start !

METHOD

1. Mix tempura flour with cold water. I read on one of the sites that you should put an ice cube in as well to keep it cold, so I did. I also read that you shouldn't mix the batter too evenly, and that it should have some lumps in it. So I did that too.

2. Heat the oil.

3. Dip the sweet potato / prawn in the batter, and slide into the wok. Let it sizzle and swim around till golden brown, or whatever the colour usually is when you have it at restaurants.

4. Remove and set on a plate laid with paper towels to absorb the oil.

5. Serve with tempura dipping sauce.

This was the sauce and flour I picked up from Cold Storage.

Dinner! Admittedly the prawns didn't quite turn out the way it's supposed to, but it tasted alright I think. Better luck (and skill) next time !