Tempura Quotes

“With each new course, he offers up little bites of the ethos that drives his cooking, the tastes and the words playing off each other like a kaiseki echo chamber.
Ark shell, a bulging, bright orange clam peeking out of its dark shell, barely cooked, dusted with seaweed salt.
"To add things is easy; to take them away is the challenge."
Bamboo, cut into wedges, boiled in mountain water and served in a wide, shallow bowl with nothing but the cooking liquid.
"How can we make the ingredient taste more like itself?With heat, with water, with knifework."
Tempura: a single large clam, cloaked in a pale, soft batter with more chew than crunch. The clam snaps under gentle pressure, releasing a warm ocean of umami.
"I want to make a message to the guest: this is the best possible way to cook this ingredient."
A meaty fillet of eel wrapped around a thumb of burdock root, glazed with soy and mirin, grilled until crispy: a three-bite explosion that leaves you desperate for more.
"The meal must go up and down, following strong flavors with subtle flavors, setting the right tone for the diner."
And it does, rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, until the last frothy drop of matcha is gone, signaling the end of the meal.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“We start with a next-generation miso soup: Kyoto's famous sweet white miso whisked with dashi made from lobster shells, with large chunks of tender claw meat and wilted spinach bobbing on the soup's surface.
The son takes a cube of topflight Wagyu off the grill, charred on the outside, rare in the center, and swaddles it with green onions and a scoop of melting sea urchin- a surf-and-turf to end all others.
The father lays down a gorgeous ceramic plate with a poem painted on its surface. "From the sixteenth century," he tells us, then goes about constructing the dish with his son, piece by piece: First, a chunk of tilefish wrapped around a grilled matsutake mushroom stem. Then a thick triangle of grilled mushroom cap, plus another grilled stem the size of a D-sized battery, topped with mushroom miso. A pickled ginger shoot, a few tender soybeans, and the crowning touch, the tilefish skin, separated from its body and fried into a ripple wave of crunch.
The rice course arrives in a small bamboo steamer. The young chef works quickly. He slices curtains of tuna belly from a massive, fat-streaked block, dips it briefly in house-made soy sauce, then lays it on the rice. Over the top he spoons a sauce of seaweed and crushed sesame seeds just as the tuna fat begins to melt into the grains below.
A round of tempura comes next: a harvest moon of creamy pumpkin, a gold nugget of blowfish capped with a translucent daikon sauce, and finally a soft, custardy chunk of salmon liver, intensely fatty with a bitter edge, a flavor that I've never tasted before.
The last savory course comes in a large ice block carved into the shape of a bowl. Inside, a nest of soba noodles tinted green with powdered matcha floating in a dashi charged with citrus and topped with a false quail egg, the white fashioned from grated daikon.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“ These noodles are so supple and chewy it's difficult to believe they're 90 percent buckwheat!
The sweet taste of buckwheat blooms in the mouth like a fragile flower. What a wondrously delicate flavor!
That does it. I'm having soba noodles for dinner tonight!
"Now for the tempura shrimp!"
How light and crispy! The sakura shrimp are pleasantly crunchy, while their tempura shell is airy and crispy! I can easily distinguish the texture and deliciousness of each individual shrimp in every bite!
The crispy crunch of the tempura shrimp and the sleek smoothness of the noodles make for an excellent contrast in textures.
Even after I've swallowed a bite, the sweetly savory aftertaste of the sakura shrimp lingers in the mouth like a perfume.”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 25 [Shokugeki no Souma 25]

“ Wait a minute...
that dish.
I've seen it before!
It's the Tempura-Egg Rice Bowl he served me before!
"Now, I've made two servings of this. One for you, of course, Book Master.
The other one... how about you taste it, Nakiri."
"Yukihira?"
"Don't confuse this for the dish I served you that other time.
See, that old dish wasn't enough to make you say it was good...
... so I've been secretly working on some new twists I could add to it.
Eat!
Erina Nakiri!
Dig in. I call it my Soma-Style...
... Eggs Benedict over Rice...
... fit for a Queen.”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 36 [Shokugeki no Souma 36]

“Take one of the dishes you will be eating tonight, fritto misto. The old butcher who sold me the meat was most insistent that it should be cooked the old way---so brains, for example, are always poached in vegetables, then left to cool before being sliced and deep-fried in batter. But then you think, this batter is not so different from Japanese tempura, and tempura can be served with a sweet chile and soy dipping sauce, so why not make an Italian version of that, perhaps with balsamic vinegar from Modena instead of soy, and see what happens”
― Anthony Capella, The Food of Love

“Don't get me wrong- tempura is served as a side dish in Tokyo, too, especially at soba and udon restaurants. Step into a branch of of the Hanamaru Udon chain, and before you select your bowl of noodles you're confronted with an array of self-serve, a la carte tempura: eggplant, onion, and squash, yes, but also hard-boiled quail eggs on a stick, squid tentacles, or a whole baby octopus. And the way most diners eat their tempura strains the definition of "side dish," because they plunk the crispy morsels right into their noodle broth. Japanese cooks are experts at frying food to a crisp and equally adept at ruining that crispy perfection through dunking, saucing, and refrigeration. I never learned to appreciate a stone-cold, once-crispy pork cutlet, but I enjoy tempura falling apart in hot soup and eaten at the moment when it has taken on broth but maintains a hint of crispness. The ship has hit the iceberg, but it's still momentarily afloat.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“Iris's favorite item at Tenta is anago, sea eel. Unlike its freshwater cousin unagi, anago is neither endangered nor expensive. A whole anago at Tenta is about $7.50. I ordered one, and the chef pulled a live eel out of a bucket. It wriggled like, well, an eel. Iris screamed as water droplets flew toward us. The chef managed to wrestle the unruly thing into the sink and knocked it unconscious before driving a spike into its head and filleting it. He unzipped two fillets in seconds. A Provençal saying holds that a fish lives in water and dies in oil; in the world of tempura, a fish can go from watery cradle to oily grave in ten seconds.
Iris loved fried eel meat, dipped in salt, but this is not her favorite part of the anago. After filleting the eel, the chef takes its backbone- hone in Japanese- ties it in a simple overhand knot, and tosses it into the frying oil. "Hone," he says, presenting it to Iris, who considers it the ultimate in crispy snack food- and this is a kid who considers taco-flavored Doritos a work of genius (OK, so do I).”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“In the U.S., to have a personal relationship with a Japanese chef across the counter, you have to go for sushi. I enjoy sitting at a sushi bar, but there is always the whiff of haute cuisine in the air (or, if you pick the wrong sushi place, the whiff of something worse). You can visit an expensive, artisan counter in Tokyo and order unusual and impeccable seafood, but come on: tempura is fried stuff. You drink frothy mugs of cheap beer and call for more food any time you like. Bacon-wrapped cherry tomatoes on a stick, tempura-fried? Sure, we had that. A bowl of dozens of whole baby sardines, called shirasu? Absolutely. (Iris claimed these for herself.) Why aren't there tempura bars in every city in America?”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“To our surprise and delight, dinner was stupendous. Served in our room at the low polished wood table, it exuded a freshness and artistry we had not seen since leaving Kyoto. The sashimi- sea bream, squid, and skipjack- tasted as clean as a freshly sliced apple. Rusty-red miso soup had a meaty fortifying flavor enhanced with cubes of tofu and slithery ribbons of seaweed. The tempura, served in a basket of woven bamboo, shattered to pieces like a well-made croissant. Hiding inside the golden shell was a slice of Japanese pumpkin, a chunk of tender white fish, an okra pod, a shiitake mushroom cap, and a zingy shiso leaf.
Pale yellow chawan-mushi also appeared in a lidded glass custard cup. With a tiny wooden spoon we scooped up the ethereal egg and dashi custard cradling chunks of shrimp, sweet lily buds, and waxy-green ginkgo nuts.
In a black lacquer bowl came a superb seafood consommé, along with a knuckle of white fish, tuft of spinach, mushroom cap, and a tiny yellow diamond of yuzu zest. A small lacquer bucket held several servings of sticky white rice to eat with crunchy radish pickles and shredded pressed cabbage. A small wedge of honeydew melon concluded the meal.”
― Victoria Abbott Riccardi, Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto

“He's on to sashimi now, fanning and curling slices of snapper and fugu into white roses on his cutting board. Before Toshio can plate the slices, Shunichi reaches over and calmly replaces the serving plate his son has chosen with an Edo-era ceramic rectangle more to his liking.
Three pieces of tempura- shrimp, eggplant, new onion- emerge hissing and golden from the black iron pot in the corner, and Toshio arranges them on small plates with wedges of Japanese lime. Before the tempura goes out, Shunichi sneaks in a few extra granules of salt while Toshio's not looking.
By now Dad is shadowing his son's every move. As Toshio waves a thin plank of sea cucumber eggs over the charcoal fire, his dad leans gently over his shoulder. "Be careful. You don't want to cook it. You just want to release its aroma."
Toshio places a fried silverfish spine on a craggy ceramic plate, tucks grated yuzu and sansho flowers into its ribs, then lays a sliver of the dried eggs over the top. The bones shatter like a potato chip, and the sea cucumber detonates in my mouth.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“It took several months of being on a gluten free diet before I started to see chronic fatigue reactions to pizza, tempura and fruit drinks that would last several hours.”
― Steven Magee

“ The restaurant Muromachi Sunaba, opened in 1869, is considered the pioneer of chilled soba with tempura. Their fame came from their version served with a side of tempura Shiba shrimp.
Miss Kinokuni's dish is similar. Though instead of the strong umami of Shiba shrimp, she chose to make her tempura from the smaller, sweeter and more refined sakura shrimp.
A wise choice, as its delicate flavor pairs exceptionally well with the mild and fragile sweetness of her soba noodles!
Once you take a bite, it is precisely that combination that makes it impossible to stop!
The sublimely smooth and refreshing texture of the noodles combined with the sweet crunch of the sakura shrimp envelops the taster in a cocoon of delicious bliss...
... making it seem as if they've eaten the entire dish in only a single bite! ”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 25 [Shokugeki no Souma 25]