Vegetable Manchurian

Indo-Chinese cuisine is something I adore all the time! Gobi Manchurian and Vegetable Manchurian is one of my favorite sides along with fried rice. Vegetable manchurian always seemed exotic to me and I have always had a notion that it is difficult to be made at home until I found this recipe!
I made this for lunch this weekend along with some quick veggie rice and it made an awesome weekend meal!

Ingredients
For the manchurian balls:
Vegetables minced or grated - 2 cups (I used a mixture of carrot, white cabbage, purple cabbage and cauliflower)
Ginger - 1 inch
Garlic - 3 cloves
Green chillies - 2
Green onions - 3
Corn flour - 3 tablespoons
Maida/All Purpose Flour - 3 tablespoons
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil - for deep frying
For the manchurian sauce:
Onion - 1/2 finely chopped
Capsicum/bell pepper(any color) chopped - 1/4 cup
Spring onions - 3
Ginger - 1/2 inch grated
Garlic - 2 cloves minced
Green chillies - 2 minced
Corn flour - 1 tablespoon
Soy sauce - 1 tablespoon
Chilli sauce - 2 teaspoons (I used mexican hot sauce)
Sweet and sour sauce - 1 tablespoon (optional) or 1/2 teaspoon sugar
Tomato ketchup - 1 tablespoon
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil - 1 spoon
Directions
First do all the grating or mincing of vegetables for the manchurian balls. I used my food processor to do this job. Chop all the vegetables roughly into big pieces and mince to form a coarse mixture. Take care it does not turn into a paste. Also mince the ginger, garlic and green chillies.

In a big bowl, take all the minced/grated ingredients along with the flour, chopped green oinions, salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly and form uniform lemon sized balls out of the mixture. Adjust the amount of flour to make the balls as the vegetables tend to leave out water.

Heat oil in a heavy bottomed vessel, slowly add the vegetable balls into the hot oil and cook on a medium flame until they turn golden brown in color. Drain on paper towels. Do not cook on high flame because the interior of the veggie balls might not get cooked properly.

To prepare the manchurian sauce, heat the oil in a saucepan and add the onions followed by the ginger-garlic-green chilli paste. Saute until the onions turn translucent. Add the capsicum/bell pepper and cook until it turns soft and yet remains crunchy. Add all the sauces and season with salt and pepper. Add about 1 cup of water and bring it to a boil. Simmer for about 2 minutes.

In a bowl, make a paste using the corn flour and a few tablespoons of water. Slowly add this to the cooking mixture and keep stirring on low flame, until the sauce thickens. The sauce is now ready. Garnish with the chopped green onions.

Add the manchurian balls to the manchurian balls just before serving.

Sending this to Blog Bites -Copy Cat Edition hosted by Nupur.