Lunch Box 488: Christmas tempura
Today's lunch is pretty basic, if you ignore how I turned my kitchen into a war zone to make it. I have tempura - the source of the carnage - with yellow squash, shiitake, Japanese sweet potatoes, carrots, and shrimp, plus a little bottle of Kikkoman tempura sauce. I have steamed green beans because after having oil and breadcrumbs splattering everywhere I needed something non-oily that I could cook on the back burner, and a satsuma 'cause by the time I packed this lunch I wasn't up to anything more complex than shoving a piece of fruit into the corner.
This tempura brought back some memories for me. The first time I ever tasted Japanese sweet potato was when a pair of friends took me to the sushi bar at the Happy Sumo, and one shared a bit of her tempura side dish with me. I had no idea what the tasty, slightly sweet, soft-but-not-mushy thing I was eating was. Only later, after I baked a Japanese sweet potato, did I recognize it.
(Website post, with links to recipes.)