The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.
Oh dear, this challenge has not gone well. Not only am I almost a week late, I have also only completed half of the challenge.
The sad part is that I was really looking forward to this one; I love tempura, and I love noodles. I don’t love deep-frying, however. This was my first attempt at it, and it did not go well, which is the reason I’m so late actually completing the challenge.
My first attempt was a couple of weeks ago; I thought I’d try various veggies — sweet potato in particular, which I adore. So, I spent a good hour preparing: chopping the veggies, blanching what needed blanching, mixing the batter and setting everything up. Then I realised how little oil we had. I had planned to use our big wok but ended up with the small saucepan instead, to get a decent depth of oil in there. I had my brand new cooking thermometer which unfortunately didn’t come with a good way of securing it to the pan, so it just sort of bobbed around in there.
It was all going okay until I actually put in the first bit of tempura, at which point I panicked. Bubbling oil! Eek! The thermometer was all over the place, getting in the way, and worse yet, the oil was still heating up. I got the first couple of bits out of the pan and then turned the heat off. It was just a bit too much. I ended up turning the veggies into stir-fry.
And I’m not sure at which point it happened, but when I took the thermometer off the dish rack I discovered that the glass had cracked at the base. Mr Satu thinks he might have broken it while washing it, but I really don’t know. Either way — I might try deep-frying again at some point, but I do not feel up to it at the moment.
So I did a baked tempura recipe instead (this one), and I didn’t get a chance to do that until today. The batter was almost the same; the only real difference apart from the baking was the bread crumbs — I didn’t really want to use them, but when I tried it without them I realised why they were there: the batter would just run off the broccoli otherwise.
I wasn’t terribly impressed with this recipe, I have to say. The breadcrumbs — lazy ones from the shop — were too crunchy and made the crust really hard; the broccoli itself didn’t taste of very much until I drowned it in soy sauce. They looked quite pretty, though:
The soba noodle part of the challenge was a total fail; I just didn’t get the chance to go to the Chinese supermarket and get the required bits — and our local supermarket doesn’t carry them at all.
Let’s hope this month’s challenge goes a little better!
