Name: Vegetable & Shrimp Tempura (Yasai to Ebi Tempura)
Yield: Serves 2
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons sesame oil (optional); Ice cubes; Canola or other neutral oil for deep-frying; ⅓ cup soy sauce; ⅓ cup mirin; 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon dashi or water; Pinch of salt; 1 large egg; 1½ cups ice water; 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted; About 2 tablespoons peeled and grated fresh ginger for serving; About ¼ cup grated daikon for serving; 1 Japanese or Chinese eggplant, trimmed, halved crosswise and lengthwise into ¼-inch-thick slices; 1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into ¼-inch-thick slices; ¼ small kabocha pumpkin, seeded and cut into ¼-inch-thick unpeeled slices; 1 yellow onion, cut into ½-inch-thick slices; 4–8 large shrimp, peeled and deveined with tails intact

Preparation info

Serves
2

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Let's Cook Japanese Food!

By Amy Kaneko

Published 2017

About

Tempura is, of course, popular in the West, so I had eaten it many times before my first visit to Japan. When I arrived in Tokyo, I discovered that, like teriyaki, tempura in its homeland is quite different from its Western counterpart.

In Japan, where some of the finest restaurants specialize in the dish, I was introduced to tempura that was as light as air and had a melt-in-your-mouth crispiness. The secret to good tempura lies in the high-quality ingredients, a thin batter, and a