Name: Gobhi Manchurian
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Ingredients: 1 medium cauliflower, cut into bite-sized florets; avocado oil or another neutral oil for frying; ½ cup all-purpose flour; ¼ cup cornstarch; ½ tsp red chili powder (*optional: add ½ tsp kashmiri lal for extra vibrancy ); ½ tsp sea salt; ½ cup water, added as needed; ½ tsp black pepper; 1 tbsp avocado oil or another neutral oil; 4 garlic cloves, minced; 2 green chilis, minced (*add 3 if you like things very spicy); 1 inch ginger, minced; ½ red onion, finely chopped (*sub with scallion whites); ¼ cup scallion whites; ¼ cup tomato paste (from 1 tomato) (**sub with 2 tbsp ketchup ); ½ tsp ground coriander; ½ tsp black pepper; 1 tbsp chili garlic sauce; 1 tbsp soy sauce (+ more if needed); 1 tbsp cornstarch; ½ cup water (+ more if you want a greater volume of sauce); salt to taste; scallion greens for garnishing

Gobhi manchurian is one of my favorite Indo-Chinese dishes. It features fried battered cauliflower with a spicy tomato sauce that bridges Indian cuisine and Chinese cuisine. It’s such a delicious way to eat more plants!

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Gobhi manchurian features fried battered cauliflower with a delicious spicy tomato sauce that bridges Indian cuisine and Chinese cuisine.

What you may not know about fusion food is that a lot of it is part of a long-established cuisine developed by immigrants living in another country. It’s often critiqued as inauthentic but it’s such a beautiful thing and we can use more of it as our world globalizes. I was reading Eat a Peach by David Chang the other day and he brought up an interesting idea: imagine a generation of Koreans arrived in Mexico 500 years ago. What would Korean food look like with different tools and ingredients?

Personally I grew up loving Indo-Chinese food and I realized we can think of it in a similar way–it began centuries ago when Chinese immigrants in Kolkata started restaurants, but wanted to cater to the palates of their Indian customers. So hakka noodles, chili paneer, and gobhi manchurian came to life. Gobhi manchurian is one of my favorites. It features fried breaded cauliflower in a spicy sauce made with ingredients accessible in India like soy sauce, vinegar, chilis, ginger, and garlic.

How to Make Gobhi Manchurian

Make the batter for the cauliflower.

You’ll need all-purpose flour, cornstarch (we like it crispy!), red chili powder (+ some kashmiri lal for a more intense color), salt, pepper, and water. Add water until it’s smooth and silky, but still a thick texture that will adhere to the cauliflower. Coat the cauliflower in the batter.

Fry the cauliflower.

Alternatively, you could air fry for 10-12 minutes at 400 F until crispy, but the air fried cauliflower seemed to lose the crispy texture more quickly when coated in the sauce. For frying, you’ll want to set up a pot that can hold a couple inches of oil and carefully drop the cauliflower in.

Make the spicy sauce.

For this you’ll just need some simple ingredients. Start with aromatics like garlic, ginger, green chilis, onions, and scallion whites. It’s common to use ketchup in Indo-Chinese cuisine, but I can’t remember the last time I owned ketchup and I wasn’t about to go buy it lol. So instead I quickly processed 1 tomato to form 1/4 cup of tomato sauce. Alternatively, I’m sure 2 tablespoons of ketchup would work well if you’re steadfast about using ketchup in your Indo-Chinese food.

You’ll also need some kind of hot sauce and soy sauce. My favorite hot sauce is chili garlic sauce! You could also use sambal oelek or sriracha.

You can make this as saucy as you want. Just add more cornstarch slurry to make sure the sauce is thick and not watery.

I didn’t have any bell peppers on hand, but if I did, I probably would have added thinly sliced green bell peppers too!