One time when I visited Japan, I had a course meal, and for the traditional, final, savory dish of rice, pickles, and miso soup, this particular chef served ‘tenbara’ as the rice, which had little bits of tempura on top and a drizzle of a soy-based sauce. As he explained it to me, ‘ten’ comes from tendon (or tempura), and ‘bara’ means ‘to cut’, for the cutting motion you are supposed to make to mix together the rice. Since I’ve been getting really into Korean food lately, I recently had an epiphany of: what if this dish were made with jeon instead? So for my attempt, I made a tendon sauce and then added in the other ingredients from what is my personal favorite jeon dipping sauce (splash white vinegar, gochugaru, grated garlic, toasted sesame seeds), and I chose to make zucchini jeon, cooked in small pieces to replicate the tempura bits. If I had enough foresight and follow through, it would have been fun to eat it with banchan on the side in place of tsukemono and doenjang jjigae for the miso soup!
by burnt—–toast