Ulog #4: Cooking Experiments Make Me Happy

My husband who is a Malaysian Chinese but often being mistaken as Malay, is not a Chinese. He is an Indian, by taste buds. He loves his Indian food and he learns to cook them by getting spices from India from a church friend. He learnt to replicate the mutton rogan josh, just so he can eat it from home.

I haven't been eating a lot of Indian food until I met him. Indian food has this amazing awesomeness that can cause heaven to explode in our mouths because of the song many flavours incorporated into one dish alone. ~~Sometimes, we also explode from the behind after eating it, but with delight.~~

After I tried making the Gobi Manchurian today, I have true respect for any Indian cooks including my Indian helper auntie who comes occasionally to our house. Whenever she cooks fried chicken, it is way tastier than any fried chicken out there. Boy, when I tried it myself for the first time today, I know how difficult it is and it is only justice they charge higher price for Indian food because of the tedious work behind the scenes.

What is Gobi Manchurian?

_{Own photo}

I first tasted Gobi Manchurian in a neighboring Punjabi restaurant called the Moga Punjab. I love it so much that I always hope they have it on their spread of dishes every day. It is basically cauliflowers, coated with flour and being deep fried. Some may have a little gravy to serve alongside with it while some not. It is a very yummy dish, if you have not tried.

Now, I am a lazy cook usually and I only try to make things both my husband and I like. He challenged me to make this yesterday, so after I woke up this morning, I decided to google for a simple recipe. Here's what I found by Food Viva: Gobi Manchurian.

I read through it again and again to see if I have the ingredients ready at home. I was ready to substitute some and add garam masala in since I have it at home, to make it more Indian-ish, Hehe.

Ingredients

6 cloves of garlic 3 shallots ginger turmeric powder salt and pepper corn flour multipurpose flour ketchup soy sauce chili sauce garam masala

Firstly, boil some water to cook the cauliflowers. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I washed and cut my cauliflowers into florets. One tip is don't cut them into too small bites, because cauliflowers tend to break up easily.
Let the cauliflowers boil until they have softened and cooked.
Make the batter: Blend the garlic, shallots and ginger if you have a blender. If you cannot find one at home of all times, use the pestal and mortar. It is easier to be washed too but not as throuroughly blended as a blender would do.Add cornflour and multipurpose flour together and add in some water. I can't tell you exactly how much because it depends on the amount of cauliflowers you have too. I add the flour and water to make a batter of a certain consistency like how we usually coat our fried chicken or the consistency of a pancake.Add the ginger-garlic-shallot paste into the batter and mix well. (Keep some for the gravy later.) Add a sprinkle of turmeric powder if you want and add salt and pepper. I added a dash of garam masala too.
Coat the cauliflower florets evenly in the batter and heat up a pan with oil.
Drop in the coated florets one by one and fry till they are golden brown. By now, you can smell a nice aroma because of the spices.
Drain them off the oil and dab with kitchen towels.
It is time to prepare the gravy though it is also nice to eat it as snack just like that by now.
Pour in the leftover of the garlic, ginger and shallots. Mine wasn't so finely mashed so I needed to cook them longer.
Add in ketchup, soy sauce, chilli sauce, salt, pepper and garam masala. I added a little bit of corn flour to thicken the gravy.
Toss in the cauliflower florets and mix them on high heat.

The Process

_{Cutting the cauliflower into florets}

_{Boiling and cooking the florets}

_{The batter to coat the cauliflower florets}

_{The florets coated evenly with the batter}

_{Fry them up!}

_{Beautiful golden brown is what we are looking for!}

_{Sautee up the garlic, shallots and ginger.}

_{Making the gravy}

_DONE!

They are now ready to be served!

I love them though mine tasted a bit more tomato-ey and sourish sweet. They are quite addictive as snacks and I almost finished it when I meant to have it for my dinner too. I may not have made the original original Gobi Manchurian thought and they looked more like the Chinese sweet and sour pork, by look, Hahaha. I naturally don't like to fry my food because of the mess and the jumping oil, but my husband's favorite food happens to be fried chicken and this. I am very happy whenever a cooking or baking experiment succeeds! Some may ask me when I am going to make this again, not again in the near future, because the prepping and washing tells me it has to be on hold till at least next month, Hahaha.