Tempura Of Seafood with Roasted Red Chilli and Onion Pickle

A delicious hors d'oeuvre which will make your guests drooling

1. 1

   Carefully removed the shells from the tails of the prawns taking care to avoid separaing the tail from the head. Grip the sides of the tail with yourthumb and forefinger and push the bottom edges together to crack the shell.
   Gently peeled the tail shell back the other way. ry not to put any pressure on the prawns where the tails goes into the body section.
   To open the mussels, placethem in a small pan with just a splash of water. Cover tightly and set over a high heat until they open.
   Discard any mussels which dont open when cooked.Remove from the pan. Strain through a fine sieve to remove any grit. When cool enough to handle carefully remove one shell from each mussel, leaving the meat in the other. Also remove any stringy beards still attached to the meat. Prepare the scallop by cutting each one in half and the sole by cutting the fillet into 8 small pieces.
   To make the roasted red chilli and onion pickle, heat the oil in a pan then add the garlic and ginger and fry until the garlic is beggining to brown. Add the onion and reduce the heat, allowing it to sweat for 5 minutes. Add the chillies, sugar, vinegar and oyster sauce and cook gently for 30 minutes. Add the lime leaves, fish sauce and spring onion and cook for a further 3 minutes.Leave to cool.
   To deep-fry the fish pre-heat the oil in the deep fryer to 190C/375F. drop the scallops and sole fillets into the batter then remove and drop immediately into the hot oil. Fry for 3 minutes. Remove and drain on kitchen paper. Next, cook the prawns for 2 minutes and, finally, cook the mussels for one minute.
   Assemble the seafood onto four warm plates with a dollop of th extremely hot aromatic and chilli pickle. Serve immediately.