Exotic mushroom tempura

As promised in yesterday's post, here is the recipe for a mushroom tempura. Strictly speaking, it's not really a tempura, because in order to get one right, you have spend 10 years in training and pass a final exam in which you have to eat your own cooking creation and survive. Or am I confusing it with something else? Anyway, life is too short and I am lazy, so the dish I cooked yesterday should be called "battered mushrooms", but I call it tempura, and my friends know better than to object if they want to be fed.

All ready to go

The ingredients are few and simple:

• mushrooms (this time I used yellow oyster, pink oyster, shimeji and shiitake, and also added one white sweet potato)
• 250g sparkling water
• a few ice cubes
• 250g white flour
• an egg
• salt
• lots of olive oil

Pour the sparkling water into a glass and add the ice cubes. Put into the fridge for 10-15 minutes. Put the flour into the mixing bowl, make a depression in the middle, add the egg and salt. Start pouring the cooled water into the middle and mix with a whisk. The bubbles in sparkling water help to make a uniform mixture, so this is possibly the most important ingredient.

Heat up olive oil in a large frying pan on high heat until it starts smoking. Dip the first batch of mushrooms in batter, place on the frying pan (carefully!), wait for 1 minute or until they start turning golden, turn them over, wait for a further minute, take off the pan. Add more oil if necessary and repeat with the next batch.

Time to eat!

A few important pointers are worth remembering, to avoid spoilt food, personal injury and domestic fires:

• make sure that the frying pan is really hot before dropping in the mushrooms, otherwise they'll turn out wet and squishy
• be generous with oil
• do not overcook the mushrooms
• DO NOT LEAVE THE KITCHEN! (I've learned this one the hard way)
• do not be alarmed if you point your camera at the cooked mushrooms and they trigger its face recognition feature: this is normal and is a sign of a good tempura 

Enjoy, and see you tomorrow for more mushroom stories!