Asian mushrooms work best here,as they take very little time to cook and shouldn't absorb too much oil. Button or swiss brown mushrooms are fine too,but will take a bit more time to fry and be slightly more oily.
1½ cups self-raising flour
1 bottle (375ml) ice-cold beer
600g mixed fresh Asian mushrooms (such as shiitake,shimeji,hen-of-the-woods,enoki or eringi),or a mixture of button and swiss brown mushrooms
2 litres vegetable oil,for deep-frying
2 tsp salt
¼ tsp curry powder
For the beer batter,mix the flour and beer together and whisk lightly to combine. Don't over-mix the batter. Retaining a few lumps is fine.
Cut any large mushrooms,such as eringi (king oyster),into smaller pieces,and separate any joined mushrooms like shimeji,hen-of-the-woods or enoki into smaller clumps. Trim the stems from the shiitake. For the curry salt,use a mortar and pestle to grind the salt and curry powder to a fine powder.
Heat the oil in a large saucepan to 170°C. Using chopsticks,dip each piece or clump of mushroom into the batter,and fry for about 3 minutes until golden brown. Drain on a wire rack and serve with a small pile of the curry salt for dipping.
Adam's tip: The curry salt is great with tempura,but also works really well with fried or roast chicken. With tempura I use a Western-style curry powder such as Keen's,and for chicken I prefer a Malaysian-style curry powder like Baba's.
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