It doesn’t qualify as Chinese for most Indians until they see the dish covered in flaming hot red colour and soy sauce-infused noodles and fried rice on their table. While it’s a little funny to think that the Chinese cuisine is far from this in terms of flavour, we have developed our own little corner called desi Chinese. Also known as Indian-Chinese, this kind of fare is rare to find elsewhere. Not only are the spices and flavours unique to India, so are some of the dishes that are classified under this fusion cuisine. It is believed that the Tibetans and Chinese immigrants settled in parts of Calcutta or present-day Kolkata and that’s how the seed of this fusion fare was sown on the Indian land. Next thing we knew, tons of Chinese restaurants set up shop on the streets of Tangra and now, we find small shack-shops and food stalls in every nook and corner of the country.
Things like chilly potato, chilli paneer and even chilli chicken for that matter, are a surprise to the Chinese too. Another quintessential Indian Chinese dish is manchurian. Commonly paired with a bowl of fried rice or hakka noodles, the crispy fried balls coated with a thick fiery sauce, can be stuffed with vegetables and chicken. Then there are variations in its preparations like dry manchurian, gravy manchurian and what not. While vegetable manchurian has a mix of several finely-chopped veggies, there’s something called gobhi manchurian that makes appearances on menus every now and then.
Today,we were craving some desi Chinese so we fetched a delicious gobhi manchurian recipe from Chef Nellu Kaura, who is a popular home chef and food blogger. Here’s the detailed recipe for you to try at home.
Gobhi Manchurian
Ingredients
For Frying Gobhi
- Cauliflower- 500 gms (small florets)
- Water for blanching
- All purpose flour - 1 cup
- Cornflour - 1 tbsp
- Kashmiri red Chilli/ Degi Mirch - 1 tsp
- Black pepper - 1 tsp
- Soya sauce - 1 tbsp
- Sweet red Chilli - 1 tbsp
- Salt as per taste
- Oil for frying
- For sauce
- Garlic - 2 tbsp (finely chopped)
- Spring onions - 2 (chopped)
- Ginger - 1 tbsp ( chopped )
- Green Chilli (optional)
- Red Bell Pepper - 1/4 (Cubes)
- Yellow Bell Pepper - 1/4 (Cubes)
- Green capsicum - 1/4 (Cubes)
- Onion - 1 (Cubes)
- Chilli sauce - 1 tbsp
- Soya sauce - 1 tbsp
- Salt as per taste
- Sugar/ Honey - 1 tsp
- 1tsp of corn flour dissolved in 2 tbsp water
Method
- Begin the preparation by blanching cauliflower florets in water-filled pan with a tinge of salt.
- Next, take a bowl and add corn flour, all-purpose flour, red chilli powder, salt and ginger garlic paste. Add some water to it and mix it all well.
- Once a thick mixture is made, throw in the blanched cauliflower florets and coat it well.
- Take a pan and add some oil to it. Drop some roughly chopped onions, bell peppers, spring onion and ginger-garlic. Now pour sauces like tomato sauce, soy sauce, chilli sauce and sweet chilli sauce.
- Season with salt and black pepper and mix it all together.
- Heat loads of oil in a pan and deep-fry the coated cauliflower.
- Drop the fried cauliflower in the prepared vegetable mixture.
- Combine all of this together and garnish with sesame seeds.
