Category: Chinese

Veg Ball Manchurian:

February 2, 2023

Super tasty and popular Indo -Chinese dish. It is served as a side dish with Noodles or Fried Rice. It is either ginger /garlic flavoured, and I usually prefer the ginger one and am sharing the same with you all.

At first, grated veggies are bound together to make a roundel, then deep-fried in hot oil. Once the veg ball is deep-fried and ready, dish preparation doesn’t take much time.

How I make –

Ingredients:

For Veg Ball:

Cabbage – around 200 grams

Carrot – 1 small

Capsicum – ½

Spring onion – 2 springs

Green chilli – 1

Ginger juveniles – 1  tsp

Salt

Corn flour – 1 tablespoon

All-purpose flour – 1 tablespoon

Rice flour – 1 tablespoon

For Gravy:

Oil – 2 tablespoons

Ginger juveniles – 1  tablespoon

Spring onion – 3 bulbs + greens

Capsicum – ½

Schezwan  Sauce – 1 to 2 tablespoons

Soy sauce – 1 tablespoon

Vinegar – 1 tablespoon

Tomato sauce – 2 tablespoons

Salt – as needed

Corn flour – 1 to 2 tablespoons

Method:

-First, we will see the method of deep-fried veg balls:

-Grate or chop cabbage, carrot, and green chilli in a vegetable chopper/food processor.

-Chop capsicum, and spring onion, mix all the sauces in a small cup and keep.

Take one bowl, mix chopped veggies, green chilli, and ginger, sprinkle flour, add salt at the end, and start binding together to make a ball.

-Deep fry all these balls and keep them aside.

-For the sauce,

-make a slurry of cornflour in a cup of water and keep it aside.

-Heat oil, drop ginger, and bulb part of spring onion (chopped) and fry for 2 minutes.

-Add Spring onion bulb part and capsicum and fry for a while.

-Add all the sauces and fry for 1 minute and add 2 cups of water ( I usually use starch water, which we drain while preparing noodles or rice, to make this gravy. It tastes and gives a nice texture.)

-Boil, add cornflour slurry and boil nicely until the sauce looks glossy and the consistency becomes thick.

-Adjust the seasoning, salt and water. Drop those fried veggie balls and allow to boil once garnish with spring onion greens and serve with fried rice or noodles.

Veg Fried Rice:

January 19, 2023

Who doesn’t love fried rice? Even I love fried rice, especially what my husband makes. Yes! You heard that right. It is his recipe, which I learnt from him. He usually prefers to make vegetable-loaded egg fried rice; today, I kept it simple by preparing veg fried rice.

Here, rice preparation would decide the texture of the final product. So, I suggest preparing rice in advance ( at least 2 hours before the final touch). Remove the starch by using the open vessel cooking method.

At first, I would brief the rice preparation:

Ingredients:

Small grain rice/ sannakki/ Jeera rice – 1 cup

Salt – 1tsp

Oil – 1 tsp

Method:

-Boil water in a big pot; add oil, salt and washed rice. Cook for 7 to 9 minutes / Al dente.

-Rice should be cooked as well as firm. Drain the starch and cool the cooked rice grains to room temperature before making the fried rice.

For the Fried rice:

Ingredients:

Cooked rice – From 1 cup of rice

Chopped veggies – Carrot, capsicum, cabbage.

Spring onions – 4 bulbs with greens (chopped)

Oil – 2 tablespoons

Ginger garlic paste – ½  tsp

Salt

Pepper powder – ½ to 1 tsp

Vinegar – 1 tablespoon

Soy sauce – 1 tsp

Method:

-Take one wide kadai, heat oil, and fry the chopped bulb part from the spring onion choppings.

-Add chopped veggies, fry for a while, add ginger garlic paste, and fry further.

-Add vinegar and soya sauce and fry for 2 minutes.

-Sprinkle a little salt and pepper powder, give a toss, add cooled rice, and mix nicely by adding the required amount of salt and pepper powder.

-Garnish with spring onion greens and serve with any Chinese side dish or eat as it is or with fried egg chunks.

-Here, I served it with Veg Ball Manchurian with Hot Ginger sauce.

Vegetable/Egg Soba Noodles:

July 4, 2021

Firstly, we will see what soba noodles is? Soba noodles are Japanese noodles made from buckwheat flour. Buckwheat flour is greyish, so the noodles have a dull grey colour, and it is gluten-free. Due to this, noodle is slightly brittle.

 As 100% buckwheat, gluten-free noodle tends to break, people add some wheat flour when preparing their noodles. Using the noodles as is, with 100% buckwheat, I needed to be extra cautious while boiling and cooling.

Earlier I did try it by adding honey and sesame as well. The advantage of sweetened with honey, it is like a one-pot meal. No need for a side dish 😀

But, if you want to relish with side dishes, you can make a savoury version by adding veggies and opt to add a bit of scrambled egg as well. Soba noodles do not need much seasoning. It has its earthy flavour.

Now we will see how to cook noodles as well as the preparation.

Ingredients:

Soba noodles – 2 bundle

Spring onion bulbs or shallot – 2 tablespoons (chopped)

Veggies – 1 bowl ( beans, carrot, broccoli, cabbage, capsicum)

Salt

Pepper – little

Ginger – 1 tablespoon (juveniles) 

Garlic – 1 tablespoon (chopped) 

Soya sauce – 1 spoon

Vinegar – 1 spoon

Spring onion greens – to garnish (optional)

Method:

-Take water in a big vessel, add a little salt and a tsp of oil, boil. when water starts to boil, add noodles, and cook. When it Aldante, strain the water and keep it aside.

-Reserve the strained water to prepare side dish/Chinese curry (it is healthy as well as give an excellent texture to the prepared curry)

-Now cool the noodle and proceed towards seasoning.

-Take a wide wok, heat oil, fry garlic or ginger. You can add both as well. Add white spring onions or shallots and fry a little.

-Next, add chopped veggies, fry nicely. Add salt, soya sauce, vinegar, and fry for 2 minutes.

-Add cooled noodle and toss. Sprinkle salt, pepper and adjust the seasoning.

Suppose you are ok with the addition of egg, nothing like it. Go ahead, scramble a couple of eggs, add to noodle, serve your favourite Chinese side dish, or eat as it is and enjoy the wholesome meal.

Note: you can cook the noodle a little early and keep it under refrigeration. It gives an excellent result as well.

Steamed rice with Hot and sour vegetables:

January 18, 2018

Hot and sour veggies with some steamed rice works perfect for a winter night dinner. It is light, filling at the same time, very nutritious and tasty as well. It doesn’t need any major preparation and I love making it on winter nights when we need a tongue tickling hearty dinner.

It is very simple, usually I use some chunks of veggies which is tossed with chunks of onion and simmered with one packet of hot and sour soup powder with sufficient water. Yes!! It is such a simple affair. While serving I usually take a couple of spoons of cooked rice as well.

This quantity suffices for a 4-member family.

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How I make –

Ingredients:

Onion – 1 big

Green chilli – 1

Veggies – 1 bowl (veggie pieces in byte sizes)

Garlic salt or chopped fresh garlic – little

Oil – 1 table spoon

Hot and Sour Veg soup – 1 pack (Knorr Or Maggi brand)

Basil or Lemon grass – for an additional flavour (optional)

Method:

-Chop vegetables and onions into chunk size. Slit green chilli. If you are using garlic, chop that as well.

Ribbet collage 1

-I usually prefer French beans, carrot, broccoli or cauliflower, capsicum, cabbage or lettuce.

-Take one big wok, pour oil, when it is hot, if you are using garlic, add garlic, green chilli, onion and fry for a minute.

-If you want to use basil or lemon grass, add now.

-Add vegetable chunks and toss. If you are using garlic salt, add it now, otherwise you can also add plain salt.

-When veggies wilts, add one pack of soup powder and mix.

-Add 4 cups or more of water to adjust the consistency.

-Boil until gravy cooks up and becomes shiny.

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-Serve with plain steamed or cooked rice.

 

Soba Noodles with Vegetables in Honey based sauce:

August 19, 2017

Once again testing period for me. Yes!! I was keeping and not at all interested to cook these dull Soba noodles. My sister gave me this pack of soba noodles “to experiment” when I visited her this summer. Last week, she had asked about Soba and told me, she is waiting for the foolproof recipe. I had no option but to cook. I was hesitant at the beginning, by thinking about my ever-choosy daughter’s palate.

On the eve of Independence Day, I was thinking about something special for our menu. So, I thought of cooking this special noodle for the first time and made my own mixture by using Honey as a base.

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Honey did help to uplift the taste of soba noodles, which is otherwise very bland in taste.

First, we will see, what are Soba noodles. Soba noodles are Japanese noodles that are made from buckwheat flour. Buckwheat flour is greyish in colour so the noodles have that dull grey colour and it is gluten-free as well. Due to this, noodle is very brittle in nature.

As 100% buckwheat, gluten-free noodle tends to break, people do add some wheat flour when preparing their noodles. What I had was 100 % with buckwheat flour and needed extra caution while boiling and cooling.

Ingredients:

Soba noodles – 3 serving bundles

Vegetables – 1 bowl of your choice

white sesame seeds – 1 tablespoon

Corn flour – 1 tablespoon

Water – 3 tablespoons

Salt

Oil – 2 tablespoons

Sauce Mixture:

Sriracha sauce – 2 tablespoons

Rice/ plain vinegar – 2 tablespoons

Light soy sauce – 2 tablespoons

Honey – 5 to 6 tablespoons

Garlic – 1 ½ tablespoons (sliced)

Ginger – 2 teaspoons (grated)

Red chilli flakes – ½ teaspoon

Method:

– Make sauce mixture by Combining Sriracha, vinegar, soy sauce, honey, red chilli flakes, garlic and ginger in one bowl and keep aside to release its flavour.

pic 4

–  Mix cornflour and water and keep aside.

–   Dry roast sesame seeds and reserve this for garnishing.

–  Boil water with one spoon of salt and oil. Put noodle, cook until al dente (it should cook and texture should be firm)

collage 1

–  Drain the water, rinse the noodle in cold tap water.

–  Collect one small cup of the drained water and keep it aside for next use.

–   Chop vegetables according to your taste. Here I have used broccoli, beans, carrot, baby corn and zucchini.

–   Take one wide Kadai, add oil. When it is hot, add chopped veggies and a little salt and fry for a while.

collage 2

–  Add all the sauce mixture, cornflour mixed water and fry vigorously to avoid this to burn.

–  If the mixture becomes very thick, add a little reserved cooked and drained water of noodles. Check for the salt. If needed add and adjust.

–  When it starts boiling, add noodles and mix.

collage 3

– Garnish with dry roasted sesame seeds and serve.

 

Buddha’s delight:

January 5, 2017

It is a vegetarian dish well known in Chinese and Buddhist Cuisine.We love Buddha’s delight at our favourite restaurant Chung wah. Their version has lemon grass flavour in the gravy, and we especially like this flavour. I wanted to try their version of veggie Buddha’s delight at home from so long. Finally I did try it this week for our dinner.

So I thought of making lemongrass infused water for preparing it and proceeded. I used the available veggies in my pantry. You can use them according to your choice. You can add couple of tofu pieces as well.

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How I prepared:

Vegetables – 1 bowl (took Zucchini, lettuce, onion, carrot, mushroom, capsicum,snap peas)

Chilli vinegar – 1 tsp

Red chilli flakes – ½ tsp

Garlic – 5 cloves

Ginger – ½ “

Green chilli -1

Salt

Spring onion – 2 tbl sp

Corn flour – 1 to 2 tbl sp

Lemon grass – 4 sticks

Water – 2 cups

Method:

-Boil water with lemon grass bits until water becomes little yellowish and lemongrass is cooked.

-Sieve this water and discard lemon grass. This is our lemon grass water which is used for gravy. Keep it aside.

– Chop spring onion, ginger and garlic. Slit green chilli.

– Chop mushroom, carrot.

-Chop capsicum, onion, zucchini into I inch chunks.

– Tear lettuce by using hand and keep aside.

-Take one tawa, put either butter /olive oil .When it is hot, add ginger, garlic and green chilli and fry for a while.

– Add onion, fry for 2 minutes. Next you can add capsicum, carrot zucchini and mushroom. Fry for 2 to 3 minutes and sprinkle little salt and red chilli flakes.

– Next you can add corn flour and fry in this mixture for 1 minute and add lemon grass water.

-when it starts boiling add vinegar. When it becomes little thick and shiny add torn lettuce and garnish with chopped spring onion.

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-Enjoy this either with fried rice, noodles or simple steamed rice. It is very filling, nutritionally very rich and taste wise – Pure bliss!!!!