Tempura

Tempura (天ぷら or 天麩羅, tenpura) is a Japanese dish of seafood or vegetables that have been battered and deep fried.

Preparation

Batter

A light batter is made of cold water (sometimes sparkling water is used to keep the batter light) and soft wheat flour (cake, pastry or all-purpose flour).Eggs, baking soda or baking powder, starch, oil, and/or spices may also be added. Tempura batter is traditionally mixed in small batches using chopsticks for only a few seconds, leaving lumps in the mixture that, along with the cold batter temperature, result in the unique fluffy and crisp tempura structure when cooked. The batter is often kept cold by adding ice, or by placing the bowl inside a larger bowl with ice in it. Overmixing the batter will result in activation of wheat gluten, which causes the flour mixture to become soft and dough-like when fried.

Specially formulated tempura flour is available in worldwide supermarkets. This is generally light (low-gluten) flour, and occasionally contains leaveners such as baking powder.

Kiba (anime)

Kiba (牙-KIBA-, literally fang, or if divided into Ki-Ba, a spiritual place), a fantasy anime by Madhouse and Aniplex, began broadcasting on TV Tokyo on April 5, 2006. The series is directed by Hiroshi Kōjina with Upper Deck Japan, a trading card game company, as the main sponsor. The anime has been licensed by Upper Deck USA and produced by ADV Films for North American distribution.

The series is more violent than other trading-card-game-tie-in animations with many characters being killed. According to an interview with the March 2006 issue of Animage, Hiroshi Kamishina, the show's director, noted that the show "absolutely will not have any plot elements that curry favor to children". The producers of the show has also commented that Kiba will not be the type of show to put "human drama" on the back burner while concentrating on promotional tie-ins. While Upper Deck owns the rights to the series, ADV Films is the distributor and their production studio Amusement Park Media is producing the dub. Kiba aired on Toonami Jetstream from July 14, 2008 to January 21, 2009 and is now showing on The Anime Network's Video on Demand service.