Cold noodles Tempura and dipping sauce

Today I made Tempura using a lot of different vegetables and cold noodles with a dipping sauce.
I like Tempura very much but it is not ment for people who want to stay slim. I think it is not a bit healthier then french fries but who cares. It is simply delicious so we will have it once in a while (with lots of regrets afterwards...)

one serving

 For vegetables I took:

• 1 yellow carrot, sliced lengthwise
• 1 purple blue carrot, sliced lengthwise
• 8 runner beans, trimmed
• 1/2 small pumpkin (japanese) peeled and sliced
• 3 spring onions, trimmed
• 1 waxy potato, sliced lengthwise
• 1/2 eggplant, sliced into rounds and halved (keep pieces in salted water until frying)

Thickness of slices maybe 5 mm.
This are way too much vegetables for 2 persons but we will have some tomorrow too.

 

I also prepared Ebi fry:
A few bigger shrimps - not as big as I wished for, which I peeled and tried to cut in the belly region to prevent curling and the ingredients for bread crumb covered fried shrimps:

• 1 egg
• Panko flakes
• flour
• 1 pinch salt

For the Tempura batter I took an very easy and fool proof mixture:

• 1 1/3 cup flour (I added it until the thickness of the batter was to my liking)
• 1 1/2 tablespoon starch
• 1 pinch baking powder
• 1 1/2 cup sparkling water (iced)
• 1 pinch salt

For Tempura batter just mix all ingredients together very quickly - there should be some lumps left but that doesn't matter, just don't overbeat. Set bowl on top of an iced cooling device to keep the batter cool or keep bowl in a bigger bowl filled with ice cubes and water.

The dipping sauce was made from:
dashi, mirin, soy sauce (3:1:1)
1 tablespoon sugar,
1 little garlic glove (1 glove peeled but not sliced or crushed)
1 slice ginger
Just heat this up once and let it cool down. Ged rid of ginger and garlic and fill sauce in bowls.

Cook noodles (Soba or thin Udon) and rinse with cold water and keep in a sieve.

Heat up oil in a Wok.
Dipp vegetables into the batter, let batter run back into the bowl (vegtables should only be covered very slightly with batter) and fry a batch of a few pieces for a few minutes in hot oil (175 C, induction heat mark 7). Time depends on the vegetables. Eggplants will need 2 minutes only  as runner beans and spring onions. Potato, pumpkin and carrots will take a little longer, carrot the longest. Flip the vegetables over in the middle of frying time.
Store fried vegetables in a sieve over a layer of paper towels.

just a few vegetables: eggplant, pumpkin, yellow and blue carrot

For shrimps:
As I said, I made a few deep cuts into the belly region up to the imaginary spine but they curled during frying: The cuts were not deep enough. Anyhow:
Powder shrimps with flour, toss in an egg beaten with a little salt, toss in panko flakes and fry until the colour of the ends turns pink and the crumb crust golden. They will be done rather quickly.

Serve Tempura and shrimps together with cold and feshly rinsed noodles, dipping sauce, wasabi paste.