Recipe: Spinach Tempura with Radish Dipping Sauce

Popular Indian cookbook chef Ritu Dalmia now offers a selection of vegetable yummies. We bring you some of her recipes, one every day! Today we have Spinach Tempura with Radish Dipping Sauce.

Ritu Dalmia is an award-winning chef, restaurateur and a bestselling author (whose cookbooks can be purchased here).

When she isn't whipping out books, Dalmia runs the popular cafe at the Italian Cultural Centre in New Delhi, and hosts two cookery shows on national television.

Her books Italian Khana (Random House India, 2008) and Travelling Diva: Recipes from around the World (Hachette India, 2011) have been bestsellers.

In her new book Diva Green: A Vegetarian Cookbook Dalmia explores uncommon yet easy-to-prepare, inventive and exciting vegetarian recipes.

In the days to follow, we will bring you one recipe every day from her book.

Today we start with:

Spinach Tempura with Radish Dipping Sauce

One has to admit that there is something very satisfying about fried food, especially if it is fried well. As a child I detested spinach in any form, except when the leaves were fried in a chickpea batter and served with coriander chutney; then I just could not stop eating it.

Even now, I am not at all keen on eating spinach in pure form, but if it is fried…. bring it on! I will eat my five portions of greens every day!

Ingredients

500g spinach, leaves and stalks separated
500 ml tempura batter
50 g regular refined flour
Oil for frying

for the dipping sauce

75 ml vegetable stock
50 ml soya sauce
25 ml sesame oil
2 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp grated radish
1 tbsp chopped red chilly
Salt to season

Method

• To make the dipping sauce, in a medium saucepan, combine the vegetable stock, soya sauce, sesame oil and vinegar and simmer over low heat for 3 to 5 minutes.
• Add the chilly, sugar and grated radish.
• Remove from heat, whisk well, and keep the sauce aside.
• Heat the oil in a deep wok till it reaches smoking point.
• Dredge the spinach leaves and stalks with flour.
• Dip them into the tempura batter and drop into the hot oil.
• Fry them in batches till crispy.
• Serve them in paper cones with the radish dipping sauce.

Excerpted from Diva Green: A Vegetarian Cookbook by Ritu Dalmia with kind permission from Hachette, India, (Rs 699)