Here is a little write up about my creating one of my most favorite foods, tempura soba.
Im really lucky( i guess) the restaurant has all the ingredients i need for my creation besides the noodles and the soup base which i got at the tiny "asian market".
We make tempura almost exclusively for sushi ingredients but also have it available separately even though I have never seen any sold separately since Ive started. So far up to this point ive only made tempura used in our sushi which includes shrimp tempura for our Crunch rolls, asparagus tempura for our Calypso rolls and the soft shell crab for the Spider rolls. When I started this though i realized that if i knew how to make asparagus tempura i could probably use that process for some of the other veggies we use for teppan. Mainly the zucchini, onions and carrots (hell yeah!). This was the first time I've tried to make tempura out of those veggies.
Besides the noodles, soup base, the shrimp and the veggies you also need the tempura batter stuff which is like flour. When we make tempura we have one bowl with just the batter and another bowl that has batter mixed with water. Ill explain more about this later.
Here's something you might not know. Before you can batter the shrimp for shrimp tempura you have to first kinda crush the back of the shrimp using your finger tips so it becomes longer and so it isnt curled. You really have to be careful with how much pressure you apply while err crushing since its really easy to tear the shrimp apart.
Once the shrimp have been prepared its time to batter them up!
First you cover them in dry batter mix which i think helps make more of the liquid batter stick .
After the dry batter you put them in the wet batter making sure to thoroughly coat them.
Our shrimp tempura has tempura flakes cooked on them. To create shrimp tempura with flakes we need to do a couple extra things. First, before we put the battered shrimp in the fryer we need to create tempura flakes in the oil. All you have to do for this is pour some tempura batter in the oil. You can see what happens in the photo when you pour the batter in the oil, it kinda turns into these little flakes which you gather up in a wire mesh spatula/scooper thingy. Once you have enough flakes gathered up in the scooper thing you lay your battered shrimp on the scooper over the flakes and then submerge the shrimp and the flakes in the oil err while trying to roll the shrimp around on the flakes. Finally you have catch the shrimp in the oil and press it against the side of the fryer to get the flakes to stick on it while its frying. This whole maneuver is actually really hard.. im not very good at it.. i couldnt document it cause its so hard.
The result after the flaking maneuver is something like this.... This isn't one of my better shrimps.
After you let it fry for about 30 seconds you can take it out. Notice the flaky stuff all around it. Oh hey theres the wire mesh spatula/scooper thing I mentioned earlier!
Heres a bunch that I did. Not my best work, oh and I some how managed to knock them off the plate right before I took this pic so that didnt help their appearance either..uggh..
The vegetable tempura doesn't need flakes so for that you just batter it up like the shrimp and put it in the fryer without all of the flake steps. Very easy!
Yummy Japanese onion ring!
All the veggies finished.
Veggies, shrimp and noodles with soup. Making the noodles is easy just put them in boiling water for like 2 minutes. Be careful not to over cook the noodles!! For the soup just mix the bottled soup base with some hot water. Be careful not to make your soup too strong! Finally just put the noodles in the soup and add some chopped green onions. Of course you can serve this how ever you like with the tempura separate from the noodles or you can add the tempura too the noodles and get something like this!
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Booyah! Success! Victory! Lets Eat!!
What do you guys thinK?? Not bad huh? This actually turned out really good. Better than most restaurants i would say and i dont not say that lightly. I was pretty damn surprised. This example you see here was my 2nd attempt at making this stuff. My first attempt did not turn out so good with the noodles being over cooked and the soup being too strong( be careful!). You know what would make this 100% better??
http://sokasaki.albumpost.com/album23/sobasmall01
Fresh hand made noodles!! >__O Hey a guy can dream cant he?
So last post I told you about a little problem our business is going to face in the next 3 months. A little problem that really.. is going to be a big problem. Start humming the empire theme and take a look at this.
This is the future site of Kyoto Miyabi Savannah. Apparently over 3 million bucks has been invested in this and its less than a mile away from our restaurant.
Here's their website... jeez kinda ghetto..
http://www.capitaljapan.com/
Uhh but apparently this place is really nice inside. Uh much nicer than our aging place.
http://www.capitaljapan.com/Miyabi.html
Also because they are a well established franchise their staff is supposedly way more professional and capable than ours too. They only use indonesians for their teppan chefs or something.
Now we do have some advantages over this place such as our location is a million times better than theirs, our prices are cheaper, and we are well known in Savannah. Unfortunately though, if you ask me none of that is gunna matter come summer time. Cause for all the good stuff we have going for us..there's one horrifically bad thing going against us.. something so bad.. i really believe this little adventure of mine could end prematurely.. like this summer.You see during the summer the inside of our restaurant heats up bit, to a cool.. 90+ degrees... 90+ degrees!!!!!!!!!!! Can you imagin eating dinner inside a smoke filled, humid, 90+ degree restaurant during the summer?? WTF!! I CANT!! Ive been told the restaurant has always been like this during the summer, even back when i first worked there. I dont remember this but apparently I did experience it. Youre probably saying well just turn on the AC! Well Even if our AC is working and is blowing out cold air as hard as it can the restaurant will still be hot as hell!! Apparently our problem isnt with our ACs blowing out cold air theres actually a problem with the way the building has been built!!! It has something to do with how the hoods above our grills are sucking out too much air and its creating some kind of wierd air flow issue that renders the ACs almost useless! AHHHHH!!!
Now, youre probably thinking "oh come on.. if the Masato has survived all these years with a problem that bad why would this summer be any different? Why do you think your restaurant could go out of business?" Heres the thing, the reason why the restaurant has survived all these years even though it has had such a huge prob, i believe, is because of one thing... LACK OF COMPETITION! ALL that changes this summer!! We will no longer be the only premier Teppan restaurant in Savannah. If people want to eat teppan Japanese food they will have 2 choices.. One restaurant thats fairly expensive, hard to find but will be a hospitable 79 degrees inside or a reasonably priced restaurant, that is very conveniently located, but is 90+ degrees inside! What do you guys think?? I think even if people have been coming to Masatos for years 90+ degrees vs. 79 degrees will be too much. People will pay the extra money to not have to eat in an uncomfortable environment if its avaliable.
According to the other partners theres not much we can do. Calling an AC guy wont help since the AC units arent the problem. What we really need to do is some major structural stuff i guess which unfortunately is out of our budget.. uggh..
So uh yeah the whole Masato vs. Miyabi battle could be over before it even starts.. They know our weakness and are totaly going to take advantage of it when they open this summer.
