Main Dishes Recipes #3: Prawns and vegetables tempura

I love tempura (てんぷら) and I usually eat it at some Japanese restaurant, but this time I decided to try to cook it at home. The result was good from the batter point of view and the taste was delicious. So, here's the recipe.

Ingredients (for 4 people)

300g prawns
2 carrots
1/2 cauliflower
1/2 fennel
200 ml sparkling water
100g wheat flour 00
1 egg yolk
oil suitable for frying
salt

NOTE: it is also possible to use other kind of vegetables suitable for frying, such as courgettes, aubergines, peppers, mushrooms and so on.

Directions

Shell and remove the intestine of the shrimp, possibly leaving the tail attached to the prawn. The tail is suitable to dip the prawn in the batter and to eat it easily.
Cut the vegetables. It is better to steam them for about ten minutes before frying, so that they won't need to cook inside oil and can be fry for less minutes.
Prepare the batter mixing the sparkling water, the flour and egg yolk.
Heat the oil, so that it reaches a temperature suitable for frying.
Start dipping the prawns and vegetables into the batter and frying them. It is important to fry the prawns only for three minutes, to prevent chewiness. Also for the vegetables it is enough to fry them for 3/4 minutes, so that they don't become too brown.
If you are not able to fry everything at a time, you can heat the oven at 60° and put the dish with the cooked pieces inside it, while you continue frying the rest, to keep them hot.
Now the tempura is ready! Enjoy it hot, maybe adding the typical dipping sauce!

Advices to obtain a perfect batter

Don't whisk too much: it is enough to mix the batter with a few movements of the kitchen whisk. In Japan Tempura is just mixed with a couple of sticks.
Cold-effect: to obtain a good result it is necessary to keep the batter as cold as possible. You can use two bowls of different sizes, so that the smaller one fits into the bigger one. Put a mixture of ice cubes and water into the bigger one and prepare the batter into the smaller one, which is then immersed into the other. So, the batter will keep low temperature during the cooking process.
How to make the batter stick better to the ingredients:flour the ingredients before dipping them into the batter.
The oil must be hot, but not too much: the oil temperature must be kept between 180°/190° to obtain a perfect result.

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Do you like tempura and have you ever cooked it?