Mountain-O-Puffy Shrimps

Here's my first attempt ever at Tempura Shrimp. I had frozen shrimp that I've been meaning to use and decided tonight was the night for some fryin'. Defrosted some shrimp, peeled them. Made a couple shallow cuts across the belly of the shrimp to straighten shrimp, to prevent curling during frying. Put in the frig until ready for frying. Got my batter ready by gently mixing 2 eggs, 1 c. cake flour, about 1/2 c. water, pinch of salt and pepper ( I used sparkling water that I was drinking at that moment. Thought the fizzies would make the batter more fluffy. Feel free to use beer too). You can make the batter thicker or thinner to your liking. Emptied out all my veggie oil into a pot. It wasn't enough, so then I emptied out the rest of my peanut oil. When Mike walked in the door from work, I started to heat up the oil. Took the shrimp out from the frig. Coated each shrimp with cake flour (season with salt and pepper). Dipped each individually into the egg batter. Shook off excess. And dropped into hot oil, one at a time. But if you are lucky enough to have panko flakes laying around like I did today, dredge the batter covered shrimp with panko flakes and fry for only a couple minutes until golden brown.

To make the tempura dipping sauce, I was too lazy to make it so I just used some soba sauce, mirin with a pinch of dashi ( japanese fish stock powder) and added water to make it a light sauce. I'm sure most of you don't have these things laying around in your pantry. So the real recipe for it is 3T. mirin (japanese rice wine), 6 1/2 T. soy sauce, 2 T. sugar, 2 c. japanese fish stock using hon-dashi(if you can't find hon-dashi, just use water.
Verdict? Fast and easy. Definitely going to be a regular in my frying repertoire. And for those of you who don't like to fry, don't be scared...it's so worth it!