tempura

sushi

cream cheese

is a floury lace through which freshness circulates owing to the quality of the oil used.

The freshness which circulates in tempttra through the floury lace, rang of the toughest and of the most fragile among foodsruffs, fish and vegetables-this freshness, which is both that of what is intact and that of what is refreshing, is indeed that of the oil: tempttra restaurants are classified according to the degree of freshness of the oil they use: the most expensive ones use new oil, which is ultimately sold to less pretentious restaurants, and so forth; it is not the food­ stuff the diner pays for, or even its freshness (still less the status of the premises or the service), it is the virginiry of its cooking.

is a graphic art, an alternation of pots, brushes, water, paper, performed before the diner , presented not as finished merchandise, but as a product whose meaning is not final but progressive.

it is not (only) in order tO make us wirnesses to the extreme precision and purity of his cuisine; it is because his activity is literally graphie: he inscribes the foodstuff in the substance; his stall is arranged like a caJligrapher's table; he tOuches the substances like the graphic artist (especially if he is Japanese) who alternates POts, brushes, inkstOne, water, paper; he there­ by accomplishes, in the racket of the restaurant and the chaos of shoured orders, a hierarchized arrangement, not of time bLlt of tenses (those of a grammar of tempttra), makes visible the emire gamut of practices, recites the foodstuff not as a finished merchandise, whose perfccrion alone would have value (as is the case with our dishes), but as a producr whose meaning is not final but progressive, exhausted, so to speak, when its producrion has ended: it is you who eat, bLlt it is he who has played, who has wrinen, who has produced.

is a light floury milk, so fragile when fried that it covers the piece of food imperfectly, revealing here a pink of shrimp, there a green of pepper, a brown of eggplant, thus depriving the fry of what constitutes our fritter, which is its sheath, its envelope, its density.

Tempura is stripped of the meaning we traditionally attach to fried food, which is heaviness. Here flour recovers its essence as scattered flower, diluted so lightly that it forms a milk and not a paste; taken up by the oil, this golden milk is so fragile that it covers the piece of food imperfectly reveals here a pink of shrimp, there a green of pepper, a brown of eggplant, thus depriving the fry of wha at constitutes Our fritter, which is its sheath, its envelope, its density.

is a meditation on selection, on the light, on the aerial, the instantaneous, the fragile, the transparent, the crisp, the trifling.

the foodstllff has for its envelope nothing but time, the time (itself extremely tenu­ aus, moreover) which has solidified it. It is said that tempura is a dish of Christian (Portuguese) origin: it is the food of lent (tempora); but refined by the Japanese techniques of cance11ation and exemption, it is the nutriment of another time: not of a rite of fasting and expiation, but of a kind of meditation, as much spectacular as alimentary (since tempura is prepared before your eyes), aruund an item we ourselves seleet, lacking anything better (Jnd perhaps by reason of our thematic rurs) , on the side of the light, the aerial, of the instantaneous, the fragile, the transparent, the crisp, the trifling, but whose real name would be the interstice without specific edges, or again: the empty sign.

is a word which comes from the Portuguese (tempora) and is a food specific to lent, but in the Japanese context it is not a food of a time of fasting and expiation, but of a kind of meditation on another kind of time or temporality - that of the instantaneous, the airy, the moment.

is light, not heavy, and in it flour recovers its essence as scattered flower.

Tempura is stripped of the meaning we traditionally attach to fried food, which is heaviness. Here flour recovers its essence as scattered flower, diluted so lightly that it forms a milk and not a paste; taken up by the oil, this golden milk is so fragile that it covers the piece of food imperfeetly, rcveals hete a pink of shrimp, there a green of pepper, a brown of eggplanr, thus depriving the fry of wh at constitutes O u t fritter, whieh is its sheath, its envelope, its density.

is marked by a quality which seems denied to all fried food: freshness.

it loses a contradiction which marks our foodstuffs cooked in oi! or grease, which is to burn without heating; this cold burning of the fat body is here replaced by a quality which seems denied to a11 fried food: freshness.

tempura, n.Memes

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