Tempura, a popular Japanese dish of seafood and vegetables that are battered and deep fried. We ate prawn, shrimp, squid, eel, shellfish, & fish, along with green bell pepper, pumpkin, & squash. Certainly not healthy because it was all deep fried... but it was delicious!
They bring the tempura 3-4 pieces at a time, so that it's hot and fresh! Then you have a choice of dipping it in salt (the 4 small bowls are: sea salt, sakura cherry-blossom salt, dill salt, and powdered green tea salt). Otherwise, if you don't want to dip it in salt, you can dip it in a traditional tempura sauce called tentsuyu (a brown sauce consisting of soy sauce, Japanese spices, and radish).
People here eat the tail and all!
Not sure what this little sea critter was - we're thinking it was a full shrimp. Joe tried it and described it as "crunchy." I wasn't brave enough to try it.... there was just something about the idea of his claws, legs, and spiky hair things in my stomach that I just couldn't handle. You can see a better picture of it in the top picture - zoom in and you can see his legs, antennas, spiky hairs and everything! Yuck!
Eww! Joe, you ate that critter?! He's probably crawling around in your stomach. Other than that it looks tasty - especially all the different salts! Joe, I know you liked that. :) What did the pink salt taste like?
ReplyDeleteyum - love tempura - don't think I would have eaten the crunchy lil critter either - not a fan of legs & antenna's
ReplyDeleteYes, Joe was all about the salt! The pink salt was actually my favorite (and not just because it's pink! haha). It had a sweet and salty taste to it - hard to explain!
ReplyDeleteI love shrimp tempura, and by the way, I eat the tails too--good protein! Who knows, maybe there's a bit of Japanese in my heritage that I'm unaware of....haha!!
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