Saturday, February 9, 2013

Sesame Sriracha Tempura Veggies!

Testing, testing...Is this thing on?

Oh, yeah! It's on!

On to another great tester: Joni's Sesame Sriracha Tempura from Vegan Fusion!

I fried this tempura in my enameled cast iron pan with a clip-on candy thermometer.  It was easy to monitor the temp of the oil that way.

First, I picked out some veggies from my stash...
Onions, broccoli (leftover, pre-cooked), Brussels sprouts, avocado, carrot and apple.
I also added a chopped, pre-cooked beet at the end since I had enough batter! 

Joni's batter recipe.

I kept mixing in enough veggies for a full round in the oil.  Then, I added them right to the hot oil from the batter.

Clockwise from bottom: Broccoli, onion, avocado, carrot, Brussels sprouts, and in the center, beets and, above, apples.

This was a decadent and delicious dinner, I served it with jasmine rice.  

Which one of those was my favorite?
Nope, it wasn't the avocado, but it was rich and creamy. YUM.

I loved serving this tempura with a Sriracha vegenaise, and I needed a sweet soy dipping sauce, but ended up using tamari + rice vinegar since I was out of time.

So, what is my assessment of the different veggies?
Actually (and this surprised even me), my favorite was the Brussels sprouts (upper right in this picture). They were perfectly cooked, a bit sweet, toothsome, and went perfectly with the batter and the sauces.  Not bitter or brascia-like at all :-)  

Second runners up were the onions, cooked broccoli and carrots.  The onions were delicious, crispy, sweet and delicate--a fancy onion ring! The broccoli was creamy and tender, you could really taste the subtlety of the batter the most with the broccoli.  The avocado was creamy and perfect, but needed a slightly saltier batter and a sweeter sauce, which would have brought out all it's glory.  The apples were fine, the texture was good, they went well with the batter and the sauces, but overall, merely average.  

The least interesting were the beets, which just tasted like cooked beets with tempura batter cooked onto them.

All hail Brussels sprouts tempura!

Who knew?






4 comments:

  1. Oh, god. Wow. I want this.
    Does Joni suggest certain vegetables or did you just choose whatever you already had in the house?

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    1. Joni lists her faves, but it's really anything goes! I used what I had in the house. I was particularly excited to try the pre-cooked vs. raw veggies/fruits to see how they each fared. I got great results with both! I particularly recommend precooking very hard veggies like the broccoli and beets, but I like my broccoli tempura soft and creamy on the inside :-) You could easily use raw and be fine.

      I was also a little surprised to find that the carrots were just as good as sweet potatoes (a fave of mine in tempura, but I didn't have any on hand).

      This was another super fun and tasty tester. The book is gonna be amazing!

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  2. Mmmmm All tempt: I am hungry!! ;) :)

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  3. Of course brussell sprouts win; they are the bomb.com! This does look much less complicated than I imagined tempura would be; now I'm craving Japanese food ;-)

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