Sansai Tempura (山菜の天ぷら, mountain vegetable tempura)

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Tempura nabe (deep frying pot), or a heavy Dutch oven
• •Saibashi (long cooking chopsticks), or slim tongs
• •Frying thermometer
• •Wire rack set over a tray
• •Kaishi paper, or plain absorbent paper for serving

Instructions

1. 1

   Trim the sansai

   Work only with identified culinary sansai that are firm and fresh. Trim hard brown bases from the tara no me and pare away tough prickles. Rub loose brown scales from the kogomi and rinse quickly. Pull bruised outer leaves from the fuki no tō and cut a shallow cross in each base so the bud opens in the oil. Peel fibrous udo, pat the parboiled takenoko slices dry, and then dry every piece again on a towel. Water trapped on the surface spits in the oil and makes the batter slide off, so this quiet drying is not housekeeping. It's technique.

   If your sansai are limp, cook a different dish. Tempura has no sauce to hide tired vegetables, and that is part of its honesty.
2. 2

   Prepare the salt

   Put the sea salt in a small dish. If making a flavored salt, rub the matcha or ground sanshō into half the salt with your fingers until no clumps remain. Keep it dry and use it sparingly. Salt seasons the crust without soaking it, which lets the scent of the shoots come forward.

   A dipping broth is not wrong, but it changes the dish. Here the point is the first bitterness of spring, not the broth.
3. 3

   Heat the oil

   Pour the neutral oil and taihaku sesame oil, if using, into a tempura nabe, a deep frying pot, or a heavy pot to a depth of 7 to 8 cm. Heat to 170 C (340 F), or 175 C (350 F) for thicker takenoko and udo. A drop of batter should sink halfway, then rise with small lively bubbles. If it falls to the bottom, the oil is too cool; if it browns at once, it is too hot. The right heat sets the batter quickly while keeping the vegetables pale.

   Oil temperature falls each time food goes in. Small batches are not fussiness. They keep the batter light.
4. 4

   Mix the batter

   Set a mixing bowl over ice. Sift the chilled cake flour and katakuriko into it, add the ice-cold water all at once, and stir with saibashi, long cooking chopsticks, eight to ten strokes. Stop while streaks of flour and small lumps remain. Smooth batter looks tidy, but it makes a heavy coat; rough cold batter fries into a lighter lace.

   Mix the batter only after the oil is ready. Cold slows gluten, and gluten is what turns tempura from a thin coat into bread.
5. 5

   Dust and dip

   Spread the dusting flour in a shallow tray. Work one piece at a time: dust it thinly, shake off the excess, then dip it just enough to veil the surface. The dry flour gives the wet batter something to grip. Too much flour makes paste, and too much batter hides the small shapes that make sansai beautiful.

6. 6

   Fry in batches

   Fry five or six pieces at a time, lowering each one away from your body. Give leafy fuki no tō about 45 to 60 seconds; tara no me and kogomi 1 to 1 1/2 minutes; udo and takenoko up to 2 minutes. Turn once if needed. The batter should be pale straw with green and bronze tips showing, and the bubbles around each piece should grow smaller as the water cooks off. Sansai tempura is not fried to a dark crunch. That flavor is loud, and these vegetables are small.

   If the oil falls below 165 C (330 F), pause and let it recover. Forcing the next batch only gives you greasy tempura.
7. 7

   Drain and serve

   Lift each piece to a wire rack set over a tray. Hold it above the pot for a moment so extra oil runs back, then set it down with space around it. Don't pile tempura; trapped moisture softens the coat you just made. Arrange odd-numbered pieces on kaishi, folded serving paper, with a third of the plate left empty. Serve at once with the salt and sudachi. With rice and a clear soup, it can sit at the center of dinner; as a single course, it carries spring.

   Tempura waits for no one. Fry in rounds and let the table receive each round while it is still crisp.

Chef Tips

• •Sourcing first. Buy sansai from a Japanese market, a grower, or a forager you trust. Tara no me should be tight and green, kogomi curled, and fuki no tō small and firm. If the basket looks tired, change the dish. Nothing hidden.
• •Warabi, bracken, and zenmai, royal fern, are real sansai, but they need aku-nuki, a harshness-removing alkaline prep, before cooking. For this recipe, kogomi is the easy fiddlehead. It gives the forest curl without the chemistry lesson.
• •An egg in tempura batter is common, but it is not required here. Spring sansai benefit from a thin water-and-flour coat, and an egg-free batter is honmono when the vegetables are right and the oil is steady.
• •If you make tentsuyu for another tempura plate, build it from real dashi. For a meatless table, use konbu and dried shiitake the way temple kitchens do. For this dish, salt stays closest to the ingredient.
• •At a dinner party, fry in small waves and serve each wave while it is crisp. A full platter made ahead looks orderly and eats tired. Tempura is one of the few times a host should let the kitchen interrupt the table.

Advance Preparation

• •The flavored salt can be made up to one week ahead and kept in a dry covered container.
• •Sansai can be trimmed, rinsed, and dried up to 4 hours ahead. Roll them in a dry towel, refrigerate, and keep them cool until frying.
• •Chill the flour, katakuriko, water, and mixing bowl several hours ahead. Mix the batter only when the oil is hot.
• •Do not fry in advance. For a dinner party, set the table first, then fry the tempura in small rounds as people sit down.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 165g)