Minoo - Leaf Tempura

I went to Minoo in North Osaka a while ago. Minoo has an Onsen, and hiking, especialy when the maple leaves are red and changing colors.

Hey! Looks like Canada!

One of the famous Japanese foods in Minoo is called Momiji Tempura. As you probably know Tempura is a way of ultra deep frying lightly breaded foods so that when they are done they have a light brown crust of tasty around them. Basically, you can tempura anything. Usual choice items to tempura include mostly vegetables, but you can also tempura squid, bananas, and I have even seen tempura ice cream!

In Minoo, they push tempura to the limits and throw their pesky maple leaves into the mix. Maybe they have too many and are trying to control the population? Beats raking them I guess.

The Momiji Tempura just kinda tastes like an extra crunchy tempura snack though. You can’t really taste the leaves… And the Tempura coating is more crunchy than the usual tempura you get with meals. You can pop ‘em like potato chips.

Hey did you guys know that the kanji for TEMPURA is really tough? Tough like “soy sauce” and “rose” are tough. Japanese usually write the PURA in Hiragana. 天麩羅！！！ Learn to write this, and dazzle your friends next time you to out for tempura.

On another note of randomness… Apparently momiji trees are normally red, and then when fall comes they turn green. Opposite of most trees. This explains why I could have red momiji leave tempura in April… Can anyone confirm this?

Yummy.

- Harvey