The 7 Day Detox Diet - Fruit and Vegetable Tempura

Fruit and Vegetable Tempura

Ingredients:

To prepare:

This recipe doesn’t really have hard-fast ingredients; you can pretty much use the fruits and vegetables that you feel like using. For one person, a serving should be about 150 to 200 grams. It could be all squash tempura or a mix of squash and apples or even a seafood mix with prawns and crab sticks. It’s really all up to you which is the fun part of having this meal and it’s also very easy to prepare.

The first thing that you need to do is to slice the ingredients that you’re going to use. Thick sticks are the usual way to go but some ingredients, like the crimini mushrooms, don’t need to be cut, only cleaned. For the prawns, shell and devein them and wash them thoroughly. The crab sticks don’t even need to be washed, only removed from their package.

Prepare the tempura batter by adding ice cold water. You don’t want the batter to be too smooth so it’s better not to use a whisk, only a wooden spoon. A pair of chopsticks would be even better. The batter should be runny but still thick enough to stick to the ingredients.

To keep the batter cold, place ice on a bowl and place the bowl of batter on top of the ice.

On a plate, put some all-purpose flour and season with a little salt and pepper. In a saucepan or pot, pour enough vegetable oil or peanut oil to fully cover ingredients when frying. Heat up the oil until 190°C if you have a thermometer or you can test for the right temperature with a little flour. When the flour bubbles and dissolves immediately, the oil is ready for frying.

Coat the ingredients in flour so that the batter will stick better before dipping into the batter. Let the excess batter slide off before gently placing into the frying oil. When the batter is slightly brown, the ingredients should be done cooking.

Remove excess oil by placing the cooked ingredients onto a plate lined with paper towels.

You can serve the tempura with your choice of sauce like a spicy Sriracha and mayo mixture or a simple lemon vinaigrette. The traditional tempura dip is a combination of rice wine vinegar or white wine vinegar, light soy sauce, grated ginger, sugar, and a little sesame oil. You can dilute the mixture with a little water if the taste is too strong or overpowering.

This is an excerpt from the book:  The 7 Day Detox Diet