Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Live and Learn -- Tempura --


My tempra ... This was my first time that I made tempra for lunch.

It is a national holiday in Japan today, and the weather is gorgeous. I only have to work at night, so I decided to go for one of my secret projects before I go to work.

Have you seen Japanese cookbooks which have some photos of tempura served not on a plate but in a basket-like thing? Ever since I saw a picture like that somewhere, that has been my dream. Yes. Serving tempra in a basket-like container with beautiful autumn leaves. So I just did it! (Unfortunately maple leaves haven't turned red yet around here....)


These are supposed to represent chestnuts, not sea urchins. They have boiled ginkgo nuts inside, surrounded by mashed potatoes. The needle-like thing coating the mashed potato balls are dry soba noodles broken into pieces. They are not regular soba, though… they are called cha-soba, which are colored green by adding ground green tea to buckwheat flour. (I got this cha-soba as a souvenir from one of my relatives last summer, and completely forgot about it until recently.) Yes, I made those sea ur....NO, chestnuts-looking tempura myself, and it was part of the challenge required in this project.

The cha-soba coating is very crunchy and tasty with green-tea flavor while still hot. After these cha-soba coated balls cooled down ---- they were a weapon rather than food. Well, live and learn
.....

7 comments:

Russell Ragsdale said...

Wonderful site! I will visit again often! It is a wonderful contradiction that obvious passions are unusual.

Russell

obachan said...

Hi
Thanks! Come visit often :)

obachan said...

I mean it. If you met a ninja who cannot buy enough shuriken, tell him to make this cha-soba coated tempra, cool them and throw them at enemies. It’d definitely work.

Anonymous said...

Whoa!! Ginkgo can actually be used for cooking leh? I thought it's only for medication for our memory. I once smell one of the fruit in my biology lab, yikes.. it has weird smell. But I guess if it can end up in a table, hehehe, worth to try...^__^  

Posted by K-Nina

Anonymous said...

Hi K-Nina,
Welcome to my blog. Yep, I know. Ginkgos smell terrible, don't they? Fortnately removing the smelly flesh takes care of the problem. What we eat is the part inside the seeds, and they don't have that smell. They are so tasty, with a slight hint of bitterness.
BTW, as I wrote in the post at the top of this blog, I'm interested in how many mililiters are in 1 measuring cup in different countries. If you don't mind, can you tell me how it is in your country? 

Posted by obachan

Anonymous said...

Hi Obachan,
Well, we don't really use "cup" as measurement in Indonesia, we use scale or those measuring cups instead. But me and my mom always use 1 cup = 250 mL. ^__^

obachan said...

Thanks for your input. So, another vote for 250 mL. Mmmm... is Japan the only country with "1C=200 mL" rule???