It was a while since I haven’t seen my little neighbor so I decided to pay her a visit, and as such we usually exchange products from our respective gardens. I had nothing to offer, so I promised her plenty of gingko nuts in a few weeks, since our tree is literally covered with nuts. And in exchange she took me to her garden to show me her giant taro plants (mine are so tiny…) and then she gave me a huge shiso plant covered with buds and flowers, and we picked together some shishito. We also checked the damages of the typhoon, actually not much luckily and of course we chatted for an hour!
Once back home it was past time to prepare lunch but I wanted to try a recipe she recommended me with the shiso flowers: tempura. Of course I am not equipped for deep frying, so real tempura was out of the question, but still, I tried something. I prepared a light batter with just flour and water, I washed the shishito, a few shiso leaves and many of the flowers and buds. In a wok I heated some rice oil. I dipped the greens into the batter and then fry them on one side, than dipped it again and fry it on the other side. And with the flowers, I simply threw them in a bit of batter and cooked it like a crepe. No way without deep frying that it would stay in one puece otherwise. I also cooked some white rice, crumbled a piece of grilled salmon that was left over, and some more shiso flower buds. And I served all together, after sprinkling a bit of salt, in a kind of ten-don.
