Chances are you haven't heard of peixinhos da horta: green beans dipped in batter and fried. It's a Portuguese dish. Fasting days, imposed by the Catholic Church and known as têmporas, on which no meat could be consumed, resulted in this dish, whose name literally translates to "little fish from the garden". But chances are you have heard of its.
The globe, which dates back to 1560, came to light when a member of the public brought the item to be valued at Hansons Auctioneers at Bishton Hall, Staffordshire.
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What is tempura?
Shrimp tempura. Image via Pixabay.
Cultural exchange is always exciting, but never more so than when it involves food. You might know that the Italian pasta tradition started when Marco Polo… borrowed the idea of noodles during his adventures in Asia. In the spirit of fairness, Japanese cooks on the island of Nagasaki would also create a new culinary tradition starting from European customs. A technique that Portuguese missionaries used to cope with fasting or abstinence days thus served as the cornerstone of tempura.
What is tempura?
The term itself refers to a type of cooking where different food items are lightly dipped in batter and deep-fried. But it can also be used to refer to the batter itself, and that’s what we’ll be doing going forward.
Como Lifestyle
With a flick of his wrist, tempura master Eisaku Hara lightly coats a large tiger prawn with batter and drops it into a sizzling cauldron of golden oil.
After years of training, Hara can simply listen to the sizzle of the hot oil and monitor the size of the bubbles to know exactly when this prawn tempura is perfectly cooked. After no more than 30 seconds he whisks out the prawn, allows any excess oil to drip off, and plates it for his watching diners.
“Tempura is the most difficult Japanese dish to get right, because it is so simple. That’s why I love making it,” says the head chef at Tempura Uchitsu in Hong Kong – the first branch outside Japan for the two-Michelin-star restaurant.