Tempura (天ぷら) is seafood and vegetables coated in a light batter and deep-fried to a pale, lacy, shatteringly crisp finish. At its best it is almost weightless: the coating a thin veil that seals in the sweetness of a prawn or a slice of pumpkin rather than a heavy crust. Simple as it sounds, good tempura is a craft that specialists spend a lifetime perfecting.
A short history
Tempura is, surprisingly, a foreign import made wholly Japanese. Deep-frying in batter came with Portuguese missionaries and traders in the 16th century. The name itself is thought to derive from a Latin or Portuguese word tied to têmporas, the Ember Days when Catholics ate fish instead of meat. In Edo-period Tokyo it became fast street food, fried fresh at stalls and eaten on skewers by the bay. From there it rose into refined restaurant cuisine, where a chef fries each piece to order in front of the diner.
The craft of the batter
The whole art is in the koromo (衣), the coating. The batter is mixed at the last moment from cold water, flour, and egg, and, crucially, barely stirred, left lumpy so that gluten does not develop and the crust stays light and crisp rather than dense. The oil is kept at a precise temperature; each ingredient goes in for just long enough. Tempura is eaten dipped in tentsuyu, a light dashi-based sauce with grated daikon, or simply with salt. Piled over a bowl of rice it becomes tendon (天丼); laid over noodles, tempura soba or udon.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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天ぷら: usually written with 天 ("heaven") plus hiragana or katakana; the word is a rare case of a foreign loan given a kanji largely for its sound.
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揚げ物 (agemono): "fried things," the broad category of deep-fried food to which tempura belongs, alongside karaage (marinated fried chicken) and korokke (croquettes).