there are a plethora of random interesting looking veggies in the super market called sansai or mountain vegetables. i have been a little intimidated to try cooking some of them, but the other day when masa and i went grocery store we found, on sale, kogomi (ostrich fern) and fukinoto (giant butterbur). we also picked up some renkon (lotus root), carrots, eggplant and mushrooms and decided to do tempura.

actually, that’s all kind of a lie, i saw these veggies on sale and wanted to get them cuz they looked cool, masa was like, what are those?  and i was like, i have no idea, but i’ll look them up on the internet.  in the end, the fukinoto tasted terrible and we decided to do tempura because we had the other veggies in the fridge and we do have a tempura nabe (pot) after all.  we thought the bitter fukinoto would taste good fried but we were WRONG.

Ostrich fern: there’s a whole lotta fern up in there, raw, stretched out and tempura-ed.   Unlike the fukinoto, the kogomi or ostrich fern was great!  very densely green tasting and just overall cool.

Pot for cooking tempura and finished product.  We made tempura bananas with nutella for dessert.  yum.