Fish Tempura

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This fish recipe brings to mind my memories of a little boy who once lived with us. His name was RJ. His mother, Mercy, was our helper. No one could look after him if his mother were to continue working for us at that time, so we told Mercy she could bring him along. We thought it would benefit everyone if she did. Work and shelter for them, househelp for us and a play buddy for Choychoy.

Choychoy seemed to like RJ, but RJ didn't like him back. Mainly it had to do with him and Choychoy accidentally bumping against each other on their very first play session. RJ ended up being thrown a good 4 feet across the room. Imagine a small car colliding with something big, say, the planet Jupiter. No one's fault, really, just simple physics at work, but the incident traumatized RJ a great deal. He would react to Choychoy's every move as though it were life threatening. It didn’t help that RJ weighed only about as much as all of Choychoy's toes combined. My poor baby worked his way around RJ as gently as he could but RJ would run like hell for the nearest exit every time he found himself in the same room as my son.

Diyos ko, iligtas nyo po ako...

Choychoy was the biggest boy he had ever seen, RJ said, and he couldn't believe how a boy his age could be as strong as a bull. (Honestly, we couldn't believe it, either.) Needless to say, the play buddy plan didn't work out.

There was one thing that RJ couldn't stay away from, though. It was my Fish Tempura. He just couldn't get enough of them. Ate it like Chippy, actually.

The day RJ and his mom bid us goodbye, I served up a Fish Tempura that (along with his memories of a giant playmate) he will never forget.

..... Looking back now, I think the only logical way I could have gotten him to play with my boy was if Choychoy was wearing a string of Fish Tempura around his neck. :)

 

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FISH TEMPURA

1. First, prepare your boneless fillet. I use Cream Dory (Pangasius) which you can easily get at any supermarket's frozen section. Slice them into strips and season with salt and pepper. Put in freezer first while you prepare the batter. You can also start heating a pot of vegetable oil at this point, for deeep frying.

 

2. Mix the following dry ingredients in a bowl:

• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/8 tsp. baking soda 

3. In another bowl, beat an egg and an extra egg white slightly, then add a cup of ice water. Again, that's:

• 1 egg
• 1 egg white
• 1 cup ice water

4. Put the egg mixture in the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir very slightly, even leaving some portions unmixed. Mixing it will produce gluten and will fail you to achieve that lacy, bubbly texture on your tempura.

5. Put the bowl of batter in a bigger bowl of ice cubes. This is to ensure the fish batter is very, very cold when you drop them in a pot of very, vey hot oil.

6. Put all the cold fish in the lumpy batter. Fold to cover the fish just before dropping it on the very hot oil. Watch it sizzle into a light and lacy Tempura. Fry for about 6 minutes and serve with Tentsuyu.

Dipping Sauce (Tentsuyu):

Put the following ingredients in a pan and cook under low heat until sugar is melted. The original recipe calls for dashi soup stock instead of water but this surprisingly turned out delicious.

• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup mirin
• 1/4 cup Kikkoman soy sauce
• 1/2 Tbsp sugar