I love fried food. I’m still waiting for Science to prove that fried food is good for us. That it clears the arteries, evens skin-tone, improves circulation and increases our capacity to love. (Sidenote: please let me know if such a study already exists.) In the mean time, I’m going to keep deep-frying falafel and marinated tofu and sweet potato fries, just because it makes me so happy.

One deep-fried dish I love at least feels healthy, though, and that’s tempura. Certainly one way to get your daily dose of vegetables is to dunk them in batter and pop them in a pot of boiling oil until they practically melt into deliciousness. As an added bonus, it’s super easy.

Tempura Batter

1 C. rice flour
1 C. semolina flour*
1.5 C.very cold water
1 egg

*I usually just use 2 cups of rice flour, but this time I used half rice flour, half semolina, and found that it formed a better batter. Either way definitely works.

The key to the batter is the consistency. Too watery, and the batter won’t stick to the food — you might as well fry the veggies naked; too thick, and it clumps together and won’t coat evenly. You’re looking for something approximately the consistency of a smoothie.

Heat a pan of vegetable oil, a about a half-inch deep, until close to boiling. Chop up all your items into bite-sized pieces, coat them thoroughly with batter and shake off any excess. Drop them in the oil and let them sizzle until the batter has browned lightly. For some veggies, like peppers and onions, you might want to give them a little extra time in the oil to soften up.

Here are some of my favorite things to fry this way:

Shrimp
Onions
Mushrooms
Bell peppers

This time we did one new thing – fresh garlic. I love garlic, and I love scapes – the thin green stalk of spring garlic – but I had never eaten fresh garlic before. We fried the cloves until they were really soft, and they were fantastic.

Finally, we had a good spread of sauces for dipping. Regular light soy sauce is totally fine, but you can get a pretty wide variety of suitable, tasty sauces at any Asian grocery. I would recommend it.