Homemade tempura, and other deliciousness

I’ve actually been lying fairly low the last couple of weeks, due to lack of expendable funds – but this past Wednesday I got a text message from the Yamamotos, a kind older couple that I met at Osako-san’s October BBQ party. The last time we spoke in person, we got onto the topic of cooking, and I mentioned that I wanted to learn how to make tempura at home – mine never seems to turn out right, even though it appears such a straightforward process. Ms. Yamamoto offered to teach me, but up until recently they were actually out of town visiting one of their daughters (turns out the reason was she fell down the stairs in her house, and had to get a neckbrace… scary. She’s okay though.) This text said they were back, and invited me to come to their house on Saturday.

During the negotiations on when and where to meet, I admitted I really had nothing at all planned for the weekend and so could go wherever, whenever. This reminded Fumiko-san that the community center near their house was having a neighborhood matsuri, so we could have lunch there, and then explore a shrine just up the hill. Festivals and shrines always being an easy sell for me, I happily agreed, and we met at noon to drive into Fuchu Town. Japanese Wiki entry here.

The matsuri was very small and homey, held in the center of an apartment complex’s courtyard around the corner from the community center. There were a lot of happy kids running around playing with balloon animals, and four or five small food stalls selling hand-made treats: we started out with the udon line being manned by about a dozen obaasans, and then picked up some takoyaki and dango mid-meal. The dango were really good, and of a type I’d never had before: the fresh, sticky skewered rice balls were coated in a sweet soybean flour called kinako. Like Wiki mentions, it kind of tasted like peanut butter. The Yamamotos were impressed with my taste and knowledge about Japanese food (though that’s a typical compliment for foreigners, admittedly) and we chatted about my upbringing in an internationally-minded house in Alaska.

The festival also featured a flea market, so we waited in line for the next opening to see what we could pick up. It was actually pretty hard to scramble through the jostling obaasans all looking for a deal, but I got a cute Hello Kitty plate for 10 yen since I’ve been needing another at the apartment. When we came out, though, I was astonished to see an authentic kamishibai storyteller performing in front of the steps outside; she even had the traditional bike, with the small wooden “stage” box mounted on it to hold and display the pictures. As she narrated and provided the voices for the characters, she pulled the panels out one at a time and rotated them into a separate compartment built into the box. The illustrations for her tale were lovely, they looked like original oil paintings or maybe pastels, and mostly featured Starry Night-style forest-scapes. I have no idea what story it was (it didn’t look like one of the traditional tales – caught the title just for a second and it was ‘something something チの木’) but I was thrilled just to get to see her. I thought that performance art had died out entirely in the 60s.

Next was Take Jinja across the street. It’s Shichi-Go-San time right now, and we saw a couple of cute kids hauling “thousand year candy” and being taken for their shrine visit by kimono- and suit-clad adults. There were also a couple of priests performing rites for the children inside the main honden building, which we walked all the way around.

Seems like it might be a popular or provident shrine for kids, since there was also a monument on the grounds dedicated to the practice of taking a picture every year to see how much you’ve grown: a big stone set in the ground, with a graduated line on it for one to put their back against.

Inside of the community center itself, I was delighted to find a fantastic and well-hidden museum dedicated to the nature and history of the area. The first floor has displays of stuffed local wildlife, and explanations of the ecology in the nearby forest; but upstairs is the real treasure, a whole floor of antique instruments and displays explaining many aspects of traditional Japanese country lifestyle. There’s even a bit of signage in English! The insides of two old farmhouses have been transplanted into the museum, along with cooking implements, furniture, and other perfectly preserved relics. (I’m definitely going back with a camera, so I’ll go into more detail in a future entry – Fuchu Machi itself has many more shrines and locations to offer, so on the way out I grabbed a couple of maps so I can come back and do some detailed exploration.)

Also, Mikumarikyo Gorge, a large park and collection of hiking trails, is only a little ways up the road – we went and walked around the very bottom part of the park for a few minutes, and it’s gorgeous, full of waterfalls and tall trees. I think I’ll be happy to make a day or two of Fuchu and walking the mountain in the near future.

The Yamamotos’ house is actually up the side of a mountain, five minutes away from the entrance to Mikumarikyo, and they have a ridiculously stunning view of Hiroshima City and the bay beyond. You can see all the way out to Miyajima and Iwakuni from their front porch. I will have to go back and try to take a picture of a nighttime panorama too, because I was just blown away.

The Yamamotos are so easy to talk to, and it’s great practice for my Japanese even if we sometimes have to resort to the dictionary (A-san got really good at using it on-demand, so Fumiko-san put him in charge of vocabulary checks while we were doing our cooking lesson.) I really had such a fantastic time. Of course, we talked about food a lot! So here’s some wisdom I gleaned during our time.

~ Although it’s possible to make tempura 100% “from scratch,” the pre-mixed batter powder is, quite simply, better-tasting and easier to control.

~ If the ingredients are already cold, it’s not necessary to keep the batter in ice-water. But if they’re at room temp, put the batter container in an ice-water bath.

~ Don’t mix the tempura batter 100% smooth. Leave some lumps and powder in it. Just stir enough to bring the water and the batter barely together. The overall consistency should be thin enough to coat the food evenly without thickly “breading” it.

~ Don’t mix the batter ahead of time. If you do, the starch will start to dissolve into the water and the consistency will come out wrong. It’s better to mix a small amount of batter just before you’re about to fry; if you wind up need more during the cooking process, keep adding new powder and new water little by little to the batter bowl.

~ The ingredients need to be very dry before you batter them. Pat dry any veggies, even scrape out as much moisture as you can from the shrimp tails.

~ The oil should be hot enough that when you press a bamboo chopstick against the bottom of the pan, it will start making bubbles boil up around it. Also, concerning oil temp, most things should go in, cook, and come out within very little time. You want to always be busy rotating items through, unless you have something pretty thick, like lotus root, which has to stay in for a little bit.

~ Rather than trying to time it scientifically, just look at the color of your food to know if it’s done or not. Tempura is best if it’s pure gold, maybe with just a tiny touch of brown at the edges.

Also, here are some recipes for a really fast lotus root side-dish, and a fast spinach side-dish, which we also had at our dinner.

Lotus Root with Bacon

– about half a lotus root bulb, boiled and sliced
– a small piece of bacon or ham
– grated Parmesan cheese
– salt (+ spices, i.e. garlic powder)
– soy sauce
– cooking oil (+ sesame oil)

Chop the meat into small strips, and also cut the lotus root into bite-sized pieces. Heat the oil in a pot or pan over a high flame. Put in the meat first, just for a few seconds, and then add the lotus root. Saute, stirring constantly, as you add the cheese, spices, and just a small dribble of soy sauce. Cook until the lotus root is a pleasing texture, soft but with a bit of resilient crunchy chewiness – about 5 minutes.

Spinach With Sesame

– four bunches of whole, raw spinach
– whole sesame seeds
– Japanese flavoring broth (tsuyu or dashi)
– a Japanese mortar and pestle

Put the sesame seeds into the mortar and grind them against the edges until they reach a slightly pasty consistency. On the stove, bring water to a boil in a medium-sized pot. Turn down the heat and put the spinach bunches into the water until they are soft (only a minute or two); then extract them again and wring out as much water and juice as possible. Chop into bite-sized lengths, and then mix with the sesame paste. Add a small amount of tsuyu for flavor and to help the sesame adhere.

By the way, if you don’t have any sort of grinding device to make up the sesame paste (I actually don’t at my house) I theorize you could get most of the same flavor by adding a little sesame oil to the spinach, and then sprinkling on whole sesame seeds at the end.