Vegetable tempura: putting the theory into culinary practice

Ingredients acquired, instructions straight from the horse’s mouth - it’s time to see how Chris got on in the kitchen…

Chris - I've realised it is actually really hard to do cooking and chopping and hold a microphone. So I'm going to need some help here. Amelia kindly volunteered to help me. Should we have a look in the bag and see what James has got for us?

Amelia - So we've got one aubergine, one carrot and one courgette.

Chris - We've got some purple sprouting broccoli as well. I've got the recipe from Alex. So if I read you the things out, can you go and get the ingredients around the place? The first thing we need is self raising flour.

Amelia - Got some.

Chris - And we need some bicarbonate of soda. I did find some of that earlier. There's some over there. It's dated 2014, so I hope that still works. I bought the soda water, which is over there. We need a little bit of salt and we're going to need some white wine vinegar. Have we got any of that?

Amelia - Got some white wine vinegar.

Chris - Oh, we have actually. Okay. Can you weigh out a hundred grams of that self raising flour first?

Amelia - Okay.

Chris - Just a pinch of that bicarb and a bit of salt. You mix all that round now. Alex said do it dry first and then once we've got the dry coat on everything, once we've cut them up, then we make the mixture wet with the soda water and the vinegar and that then makes it froth a little bit and makes the batter all light. I'll peel the carrot so I can probably manage that. Do you want to chop up the courgette and the aubergine and the broccoli? And I'll go and peel this carrot. Mind your fingers. We don't want any tempura finger.

Amelia - Not vegetarian.

Chris - Okay, I'm going to put the batter mix in this bowl. So I reckon they're all nice and damp, so they should go in there and get coated. He said put them in dry first, Then we make them wet.

Amelia - Courgette first.

Chris - We are getting courgettes now that are basically disks covered in the flour and the bicarb mix. They have coated pretty well actually, haven't they? I was expecting them to go a bit more lumpy, but it's gone okay. So we now have broccoli that looks like Christmas trees covered in snow. Okay, right, got the broccoli. I'll leave you to do the aubergine and the carrots. I'm going to go and sort out the oil. Let's light the gas. The oil is heating up. I will go and get the soda water and the vinegar. I've got measuring jugs.

Amelia - What does the soda water actually do?

Chris - According to Alex, because it's full of carbon dioxide, that's what makes it fizzy and it's a bit acidic. And we're going to add some vinegar that's also acidic in a second. This reacts with the raising agent in the self raising flour and the bicarbonate of soda. And it releases even more CO2. And that makes the batter we've made much more fluffy and bubbly, crispy.

Chris - It's fizzling. Kind of like pancake mix sort of. Now I need to add a dash of vinegar to that. Oh, it's fizzing. That's really fizzing now. Right now what we need to do is put your bits of vegetable through that mixture and then drop them in. Should we do one of each first just to see what they look like.

Amelia - One bit of broccoli.

Chris - Broccoli's in the wet mix.

Amelia - Quite thick, but light at the same time.

Chris - Drop it in. Let's see what happens. He said two minutes and it'll go a sort of brownie crispy colour. Good. What we're doing now, carrot. Looking good. That is looking good. And you can see where the batter is frothy. It is all kind of fluffy but crispy. It's amazing. And the carrot - that looks good.

Amelia - Gorgeous as well. It's cooking fast.

Chris - It is cooking fast. Here's a plate.

Chris - Can we do more broccoli? That looks so delicious. I'm dying to have that. We've got the things we cook first now out on the plate.

Chris - I've already had dinner and I'm feeling hungry. We need to dip it with some sweet chilli. So let's just get that it's in here. Are you ready? I'm ready.

Amelia - Really good.

Chris - The batter is beautiful.

Amelia - It tastes just like prawns as well.

Amelia - Delicious. That's a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

Chris - I've enjoyed making it. It didn't take us very long to make it. Really, really tasty.

Amelia - Quick 15 minute meal and you're sorted.

Chris - Would you do it again?

Amelia - Absolutely.