Steemit Iron Chef 2017 #08 : Butternut Pumpkin Tempura

Pumpkin! I did some reading and found out that the plant on which pumpkins grow is the same species that gives us a wide variety of squash including the summer squash! The heck?!? Anyway, once I found out that that includes butternut, and the contest specifically calls that out as an option, and many parts of the world call it a butternut pumpkin instead of butternut squash, I decided to take the challenge in that direction. I prefer the cleaner flavor of this variety.

This picture is a sort of "fork" off the main branch of my preparation. But I wanted to show it off because it's pretty and also, because I made toasted pumpkin seeds as a garnish and forgot to put them on the main dish that I was creating...D'oh! So this is a scallion, a yam medalion, and a butternut arch sprinkled with toasted pumpkin seeds in olive oil, salt, and pepper:

Now on to the main story!

I made a tempura batter out of: about 1 C of cake flour, 1/2 C all purpose flour, 90% of the seeds from the butternut (boiled for ten mins, roasted at 300F for 25 mins, cooled, and crushed up), 1 T cornstarch, 1/2 t baking powder, 1/4 t salt, and a 12 oz can of pumpkin ale. Crushing the seeds was a pain but they did texture up the batter and they gave off the most amazing aroma as I was rolling over them.

I also made a dipping sauce that started with a sort of dashi-like broth (kombu, dried mushrooms, green onion, and a slice of squash -- gently warmed for an hour and strained).

Once that was done, I had about a cup of it, to which I added: 3 T soy sauce, juice from half a lime, juice from half a lemon, some lime zest, a grated fermented radish, 2 t white miso, and the chunk of pumpkin that had been in the broth mixture, mashed and whisked in.

Of this tempura, the pumpkin was supposed to be the main star, but I didn't want it to be alone. So in addition to slicing half of it up into semicircles and archways, I sliced up a yam, two bunches of scallions, and half a purple onion. I dredged the pumpkin and yam in flour before battering and frying.

I brought a whole lot of coconut oil up to around 350F (though I had some trouble keeping it stable -- this is my first time deep-frying without a frying appliance and I was turning the heat up and down and up and down :-) ).

And eventually, I turned up with some good plates!

Each one had a small dome of rice and a bowl of dipping sauce.

It was a good learning experience though I feel like maybe I've had enough oil for the week already. Here are some closeups where I was trying to catch the interesting textures in the batter:

I hope talking about things I could have improved isn't dumb since this is a contest, but learning and improving is pretty important. My pumpkin should have been sliced thinner and also fried in smaller pieces. It was pretty good when I didn't under/over-cook it, but I think it would have been more uniformly delicious if they'd all been 1/4" slices. I mostly included the fat purple onion rings so that I'd have a stacking element for presentation, but they were so good that I wish I'd cut up a couple of those onions and fewer of the scallions. The scallions were delicious but hard to eat because biting through them is tough -- they'd be easier to eat as smaller pieces, but maybe not as pretty. I also wish the sauce I just whipped together had been more compelling. It was OK, but not really delicious. Half way through my meal, I added a bunch of soy to mine, and it was better. So I think I did good, and the family liked dinner, but I have room for improvement!

Thanks for reading, everyone! If you have any questions or comments, that would be keen.